Deebes Legacy
by Akktri
Summary: The son of Jack Deebes discovers his father's secret.
1. Chapter 1: That's All Folks

As I stood in the cemetery, dressed in my tuxedo, staring down at my father's tombstone, the first thing that came to my mind was that we were only burying a symbol, for closure.

There was no body. No remains. Hence no coffin. No urn.

Just a marble headstone with the epitaph, "THAT'S ALL FOLKS."

Dad wanted one of his crazy cartoons etched into it, but he didn't have the money.

It was a nice funeral, but I felt no more closure than I did before we arbitrarily declared him dead. I still thought he might be hiding out in Japan with all those Anime types.

If you've read anything at all about me in the Nevada papers, you'll believe me when I say I never knew my father.

I was still an embryo in my mother's womb when dad killed Mr. Glenwood in a fit of jealous rage.

Mom was Mrs. Deebes back then, but dad was "too busy with his damn cartoons to pay attention to her," so she started sneaking out with a gynecologist she met at the health club.

When dad caught them sleeping together, he shot him.

I heard the guy pulled a knife or something, but the guy was naked and clearly in the middle of something, so I'm not sure how they brought it down from murder one to manslaughter.

His bedroom.

His dresser.

His gun.

He clearly had the home team advantage.

I often wonder what it would have been like if he'd premeditated a bit further, maybe stayed off the police radar enough to be a real father to me. At least, for awhile.

While he was serving time in a federal penitentiary, mom was busy getting sonograms and throwing up.

Thanks to the divorce settlement, and a part time job at a doctor's office (not the gynecologist, of course), she got cared for well enough. Even though dad couldn't do that much from prison, he had a successful comic book franchise going, and that's what he used to pay for alimony, and later his bail.

From what I heard, Jack Deebes was a model prisoner. His good behavior earned him a cell to himself, and access to a drawing table and art supplies that most inmates are forbidden access to.

He also got out of prison early. Good behavior.

I don't remember a lot about the incidents immediately following his release. The papers said that some terrorist released a million gallons of lysergic acid into the Las Vegas water supply.

I guess there might be something to that, the way dozens of people are still reporting strange flashbacks and weird delusions about being animated cartoons, but that answer never completely satisfied me.

I think I was about three or four when it happened.

To this day, I swear I remember suddenly becoming a mouse with unnaturally illuminated paws, the color of Bugs Bunny's butt.

I remember laying in my crib, staring at my fingers until a pink cartoon elephant dressed like mom saw me and shrieked in pachyderm fashion.

Whenever I tell mom about it, she just tells me I'm making things up.

Maybe she's right. Or maybe I did ingest some of that acid when I was little.

No one knows what happened to my dad after he was sighted at that hotel.

One witness swears my dad turned his hands into animated ones and climbed to the top of the building, but everyone says the witness was high.

I guess we all were.

What he was doing up there, I have no idea.

Someone said he was fighting a woman, or a man, or escaping from the cops.

Some say he is the one who put the LSD in our water supply, and the cops were hunting him down.

Some say he got pulled in by that big black cloud everyone seemed to hallucinate.

Mom said he just shared a room with a strange whore/singer from the hotel.

Seems plausible enough. After all, witnesses at the epicenter of the whole mess claim that a woman in a tight skirt enthralled casino goers by seducing a lounge singer with a thoroughly suggestive performance of Sinatra's _Let's Make Love_ just moments before transforming into a cartoon clown.

It could have been the same woman, according to the reports, drug influenced as some of them might be.

When alimony stopped, and his taxes went unpaid for so long, the FBI went on a manhunt, but they didn't find anything.

From what mom heard from one of the officers, he was seen a comic book shop, purchasing his own books.

Twice he was spotted by neighbors going out of his house, once with a strange blonde woman, once with a square jawed gentleman in a raggedy period costume.

He visited briefly with one of the neighbors, a teenaged blonde girl named Jennifer, from whom he borrowed transportation. Mom thinks he drove her to the hotel in question and slept with her, but none of the witnesses spotted her in the hotel proper.

My mother thinks she matches the description to a T, but from the reports, the blonde seems to be several inches taller, and at least a decade older.

The weirdest thing about the Cool World comic book series is that it kept going, even after my father's disappearance.

The FBI and the IRS have both investigated the matter as far as they possibly could, but nothing added up.

The publisher claims that the packages just started showing up at his door.

Upon searching, the police found no return addresses on the shipments, no customs forms, no distinct clues as to their origin.

All done in my father's style.

Although suspicious, they were not considered substantial proof that my father was alive. The packages alone meant nothing. Someone could be doing forgeries. They even insinuated that I did them, though I have no idea why I would invent a character like Amanda Bunny.

Amanda was weird. A cartoon in one panel, a hyperrealistic person in the next. I couldn't even follow what was going on with her half the time. But there was something about her curves, those hips, the way her body was shaped...I just couldn't stop staring.

One time the police sat me down and tried to make me draw Amanda. I failed miserably.

I draw with my left hand. I can't make more than a stick figure, yet they were unconvinced by my absolute lack of skill. They accused me of holding out.

I even met with a police psychologist. You know, just to make absolutely certain Sybill wasn't drawing those pictures while Sane Me pretended to fail art class.

Math. Science. Gym. That's what I score high on at my school. I planned to go into med school once I finished senior high.

All that changed when I started poking around "The Deebes' Estate", that itty bitty piece of shit rental property two miles south of the Vegas strip.

It seemed my acid induced nighmares were only beginning.


	2. Chapter 2: Jessica

FYI: Rewrite on previous chapter. Corrected character names and line about "estate".

* * *

Dad lived on a rental property, so there wasn't much of any estate for me to inherit. In between the rent and the alimony and the legal fees, his royalty checks from the comics just barely covered his day to day living expenses.

Two months after the incident, the property manager, noticing that the rent hadn't been paid, put up an eviction notice.

A few weeks after that, after the final eviction notice, a group of guys from temp labor took all his things to the dumpster.

My mother, of course, upon receiving a query from the owner, managed, probably illegally, to swoop in there beforehand, snatching up whatever valuable items she could find, furniture, prints, originals, premium art supplies. The rest went to the curb.

The Deebes' will was poorly conceived, and his ex-wife's lawyers poked it full of holes, meaning that mom got dibs on just about everything that wasn't in the house. Some of my favorite limited edition prints ended up being claimed and sold at auctions so she could buy jewelry and fancy clothes at the big end retailers.

I was just a baby at the time. I didn't get a choice about what got thrown out.

For a long time, I was rather apathetic about the whole business. After all, despite the lack of meaningful possessions from my father, the sales and the court imposed garnishments on my father's royalties fed me and put clothes on my back for a large portion of my life.

I thought I would go through adulthood without seeing a scrap of my father's real life until I saw the woman at the funeral.

It was a strange curly haired blonde woman with glasses, reminding me of the picture of dad's accomplice they showed in newspapers.

I never knew where that woman went to. I've driven past dad's old rental flat numerous times over the years, but only stopped and looked around a couple.

I had found his neighbors unfriendly and aloof. When I had visited as a young child, I saw a woman spying on me and mom from a window. Instead of coming out and greeting us, she just threw the curtains closed really fast.

I often wondered if our voyeur was the same woman as in the newspaper, but she never appeared when I knocked on her door. I'm not that good with faces, so I had no way of telling if it were her. Besides, I had only been a baby when the incident occurred.

I wouldn't have spoken to the blonde at all, had I not noticed her strange outfit.

The woman, roughly forty years older than me, had on a shiny black dress with a slit running up the side. The neckline was plunging, entirely the wrong type of thing to wear to a funeral, even if she did wear a t-shirt and little black shorts underneath.

Of course, this was excused by the fact we didn't have a body, it was outside, and a cluster of devoted fans stood nearby, the woman clad in outfits more revealing than that.

The social faux pas, in and of itself, wasn't the weird part. That's _Desperate Housewives_ stuff. What was weird was the material of the dress. It looked like it had been painted on.

I don't mean skin tight. I mean _literally painted with a big brush_, and the paint was still wet. How it stayed on her body and covered anything defied physics.

The paint surrounded her plump figure like plastic, but didn't cling. Instead it rippled, like liquid. The more I stared at the black material, the more I associated it with the times I'd watched cartoons with my face too close to the screen, and how the black characters looked as the paint made slight movements from frame to frame to frame.

The puff sleeves and a portion of the skirt section appeared to be regular silk, but the rest I expected to see coming out of Walt Disney's inkwell with a blinking set of googly eyes.

Throughout the ceremony, I stole glances at her. She was only about ten years younger than my mother, so it was mostly out of curiosity.

When the farce of a funeral ended, I noticed her trying to sneak away, behavior consistent with the aloof loner type I'd seen at the rental property.

I immediately ran up to her before she could escape.

"Hey!" I cried. "Who are you?"

She looked nervous. "I was a good friend of your father."

"Aha!" I said. "The dress! The famous Holli Would! I knew it! I have so much to ask you!"

The woman burst out laughing. "I wish!"

Her smile dropped. "You're his kid, aren't you? Andrew, right?"

I nodded. "Who are you, then?"

"Jennifer Rollins. I work for United Health. Your father was my next door neighbor."

She let out a sigh. "What do you want to know?"

"What happened after my dad got out of prison?" I blurted.

Jennifer glanced back and forth, as if afraid to be overheard. "A lot of stuff. I know it might sound crazy, but I don't believe in the lysergic acid theory."

"But the hallucinations!" I protested. "How do you account for that?"

She tugged on the flowing ink of her dress. "How do you account for this?"

My moth fell open, speechless. "But..."

"Think you're hallucinating now?"

"It stays in your system a long time," I fumbled.

"Think what you want," she said. "But if you want answers, I've got them."

My mother, clad in a kind of slutty dress herself, marched up to me, tugging on my arm.

"C'mon, Drew. Let's go."

"Drew," Jennifer chuckled. "That's cute."

"Wait," I told mother. "She knew father."

"She was your father's whore," she snapped.

I shoved her arm away. "I don't care. I want to talk to her."

Mom gave me a cold glare. "You want to stay and talk to that tramp? Fine. But you'll have to find your own way home!"

"There's plenty of room in my car," Jennifer smiled.

I raised an eyebrow, giving her a nod.

I could see mom's face flushing red.

"Fine!" she shouted. "I hope the funeral home tows your car!"

She stomped away from the grave site, slamming the door as she climbed into the limo.

"To think your father murdered someone for her," Jennifer said as she watched her go.

She gave me an apologetic smile. "Want to go out for coffee or something?"

Like I'd really say no at this point.

Jennifer owned a little red Honda four door, its seats and the spaces between crammed with art supplies, comic books, dolls, and books on the paranormal. She had whole sketchbooks full of confusing notes and meticulous renderings of my father's characters.

Betty Boop seat covers. A Thundercats medallion dangling from the rearview. The interior smelled of paint, linseed oil, Chinese take-out and a tinge of marijuana.

I didn't really expect a straight answer from someone so mentally deranged, but even a patient at an asylum can occasionally provide concrete facts about the building in which they reside. I chose to take everything _con grano salo_.

When we pulled away from the curb, trailing the procession out, I said, "Did you sleep with him?"

As an afterthought, I qualified it with, "Ever?"

"Well," she said, looking a bit pink. "No. I mean, I thought about it a couple times, but he's way older than me. Mostly I just really really love his comics."

"You talk about him like he's still alive."

"Oh he is!" she said as she took a turn out of the cemetery. "He is."

"But how do you know?"

"I'm one of the last people that saw him," she said.

We rolled through dusty Nevada neighborhoods. A depressing lack of color. All sand and sagebrush and cacti. Ugly one story buildings, cigarette shops and taco stands. All the color appeared to have drained into the Strip, leaving outlying areas desolate.

Jennifer tugged on her sleeve. "You know, this dress once belonged to Holli Would?"

"The woman who was at the hotel?"

She nodded.

"Are you friends with her?"

She shook her head and sighed. "It would be nice!"

"So you just like to raid her closet."

"She didn't have a closet. She just left her things behind in a bunch of suitcases like she were traveling or something. She didn't even come back to pick them up."

"That's nice for you," I said.

"I'd say so."

I chuckled. "What's with all the junk in the back seat?"

"I'm trying to create what your father made. I know it sounds crazy, but there's something that he did, and if I can just figure out what it was..." She trailed off.

"You think you can create your own franchise."

She laughed. "You're thinking too small."

My eyes widened. "You actually want the whole nine yards? Movie deals? Action figures? That's your angle?"

Jennifer giggled and shook her head. "You're still thinking too small. Look. Money doesn't even enter the equation. I've got something much bigger in mind."

I gawked at her. "You're starting a religion? Around my dad's comic books?"

"Your mother raised you to be a very closed minded boy. It's sad."

"Then what?" I said. "What's your angle?"

"Do you believe in parallel universes?"

I frowned at one of her pseudoscientific books. "Not exactly. They're only theoretical. Makes for great television. That's about it."

"They're not entirely theoretical," she said.

Jennifer pulled to a stop in a Starbucks parking lot, offering a section of the flickering painted dress for me to touch.

At first, I hesitated. I mean, I was only a toddler when she was running around with my dad, and she basically wanted me to touch her body, but then I relented. She was only showing me her weird clothing material.

The substance felt like paint, silky and liquid, but my fingers came away dry. The material stretched like normal clothing when you tugged on it.

"You're saying this came from a parallel universe."

"How else would you explain it?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "It could be a new space age fabric. I don't see what this has to do with my dad's comics."

Jennifer rolled her eyes. "Okay. Nobody can see this but you and me, and I can only show you for a second."

I raised my hand in protest. "I don't do older women."

"What!" her face flushed red. "That wasn't even what I was going to show you! You're as bad as your father!"

"So he _did_ flirt with you."

"No," she said. "But he has a reputation..."

"So do you," I returned.

Frowning, she said, "Fair enough. Look. It's in the glove box."

She undid the latch on the compartment. "I'm only going to show you this for a second, so keep your eyes and your mind open."

"Okay," I said, confident that she was crazy.

The compartment contained a single neon blue high heeled slipper, one with blinking eyes and a bow. Animated.

"Holy shit!" I cried. "That's from a Disney-!"

She slammed the compartment shut.

"Do you understand now?"

I stared at her, unable to formulate a response.

"Cool World is real," she said. "Your father's comics. Cartoon characters. It's all real."


	3. Chapter 3: Union Plaza

We took a booth in the back corner of the establishment, out of reach of prying eyes and ears.

Jessica had brought in her purse and a pair of sketchbooks, appropriate for typical Starbucks clientele. She got the mocha, I got a tart apple caramel thing. She paid because she was the nut job with the story. Of course, if I really had thought her crazy, I would have tacked handfuls of those expensive desserts onto her bill.

"I was in high school when I met your father," she was telling me. I was expecting to hear an unrequested tale about his love life, but she didn't go that route. "I saw him move in, after he got released from prison. I saw weird lights flashing in the house at night. At first, I thought it was the TV."

She sipped her drink.

"But then the woman appeared. Holli. She acted like a total flake. I see them driving off together.

"Your dad came back, and that's when I came over to investigate. I saw a handsome cop guy hanging out with your dad, and your dad said that Holli took his ride, so I let him borrow my mother's car. After all, he said he was saving the world."

"What did you see at the casino?" I said.

"To tell the truth, not much. I didn't go in. I was kinda weirded out by the whole `being turned into Little Orphan Annie' thing."

"The hallucinations."

She shook her head. "I don't know what Holli did up on top of that hotel, but I saw this black inky stuff flying out..." She tugged on her dress to illustrate. "And everything got changed into a cartoon. Jack said it had something to do with a spike, but I didn't understand it completely. I still don't.

"They had a big fight, Holli and your dad. Jack somehow made his hands cartoony and flew up to the roof, and somewhere along the lines, the cop guy got thrown off the side.

"Your dad must have won the fight, because then all the cartoon stuff vanished. That's all I know."

"That's a lot to swallow," I said.

She offered me a straw.

"No, I mean, your story."

She gave me a look that said, "Oh well, I tried."

"You asked for what really happened, and I told you what really happened. It's not my fault if you don't believe me."

An awkward silence followed.

"All right," I said. "What's the deal with the sketchbooks? You're not franchising or starting a cult, so what _are_ you doing with them?"

She spread one of them open for me to see. An elaborately detailed sketch of a street leading down a stretch of tall twisting buildings.

"Nugget Street. I've pieced it together through a careful study of Cool World issues one to eleven. It wasn't easy with all those character heads and bodies and objects in the way, but I think I've got it rendered just about accurately enough to open a doorway."

I laughed. "You're trying to transport yourself into a drawing."

I saw no mirth on her face. No sign of this being a joke. "I either want to go in, or pull something out."

"Admittedly," I stammered. "You have an animated shoe and animated clothes, but going into the drawing...art is only an illusion we make with inks and brushes on a two dimensional surface. Even video and sculpture have their limitations." I sighed as I admired her form through the rippling animated dress. "How did you get that thing you're wearing? Or the shoe? I mean, you shouldn't be trying to figure these things out when you've got something from Toon Land already."

She rolled her eyes. "I found these completely by accident. Your mother threw a bunch of Holli's luggage into the dumpster and I just dug them out. If I knew how the stuff got here, we wouldn't be having this conversation. I would be there already."

"So how's the sketch been working for you?"

"It's not," Jessica groaned. She turned the page, revealing a folded blueprint. When she unfurled it, I could see it was a map of High Desert State Prison.

"Should I even ask?"

She pointed to one of the cells, highlighted and circled several times. "This is where your father spent ten years of his life, drawing his cartoons. I believe the prison has some kind of connection to Cool World that goes beyond his obsession. Something about that precise geographic location at that exact period of time.

"The Celts weren't around in this region of the world, so I'm thinking Indians. Shamanic magic, maybe. Or wormholes. Your father was like the key, the chosen one or something. Somehow he triggered a path to a parallel universe, or the spirit world."

I paled. "Don't tell me you intend to break in."

"I thought about it," she said, turning the page. "The only trouble is, I think I'd have to murder someone for it to activate."

I frowned at the clipped article about my father killing my mother's lover. "I'd definitely draw the line at murder," I said. "No pun intended. If your little scheme to open the doorway doesn't work, you're looking at the death penalty. And for what?"

"Yeah," she muttered, looking like she'd do it if she knew she'd get away with it.

"It's like the Oracle at Delphi," I said. "I think he may have been sitting over a volcanic fissure and breathing in the fumes, making him hallucinate all kinds of stuff."

"There are no active volcanoes in Nevada," she said.

"Okay, so maybe he's breathing in Radon or something. The point is, maybe there's a perfectly logical scientific explanation for what happened, and you're trying to make blood sacrifices to cause the sun to go up."

"What about the shoes?" she prodded.

"Well." I couldn't think of anything to say about that, so I didn't try.

The next page contained a series of snapshots of a casino.

"The Union Plaza Hotel," she said. "Your father's last known whereabouts. I believe the `spike' that he referred to, or maybe a doorway to the other dimension, some kind of point of origin for animated beings, is located somewhere up on the roof. Since the big battle up there, some new security measures have been put in, but I think they've let their guard down over the years, so there could be a strong chance of bypassing it without detection."

I remembered that the newspapers had mentioned Holli's fixation with locating a man who didn't exist, some mafioso that probably existed only in her mind. "You think Vegas Vinnie set up all that security?" I joked.

She stared at me like it were a serious question. "I don't think so. He disappeared with the other cartoons when the spike or whatever got replaced."

"I hope you're not planning to break in the place," I said.

She shrugged. "You don't have to kill anyone..."

Jessica turned the page and I saw character sketches, along with photographs of dad at his drafting table.

"Somehow, I think Jack could just draw things, people, and make them come to life. Or maybe summon existing creatures from another dimension to this one. I've heard rumors that Jack Kirby possesses a rare gem that allows him to draw amazing comic books and make them come to life. Unsubstantiated, of course, but I had to examine photographs of your dad's work space to make sure he didn't have some magical artifacts himself.

"In these photographs, I've studied his tools, his clothes, his environment, but I still can't seem to make sense of it. How did he bring Holli into our world?"

"You're implying that she's fictional."

"She is. That's what's so amazing about it. I'm wearing a piece of fiction."

I frowned. The fabric was definitely _science_ fiction, I'd give her that. I mean, a decade ago, _cel phones_ were science fiction. "She's not fictional, though. She's in the paper. She was on television news."

"Are you saying she's not merely because of some news stories?"

"Yes?"

"Well you're wrong."

"You're entitled to your opinion," I said. "As crazy as your opinion is. Speaking of which, I think you're over analyzing things a little too much. I mean, what if he didn't do anything to open up this portal you keep talking about? What if she brought him to her?"

"I thought about that. But if that were the case, I'd never be able to go there."

"Maybe you can't. Did you ever think about that?"

"Of course I did," she pouted. "But it wouldn't be fair. I have all her things. I wrote her messages. You'd think something would attract her notice."

"I'd like to get back to the funeral parlor," I said. "I don't want my car towed."

"Not yet," she said. "We've still got time."

I sighed. "Enough time to hear your crazy theories?"

"They're not just theories. I thought seeing the physical evidence would have convinced you of that."

"Yeah?" I said with exasperation. "But you're never going to find what you're looking for. It's not physically possible."

"Your dad did it somehow."

"I don't know about that," I said. "I know mom always said he was `in his own little world', but there's no evidence he actually went anywhere. Things came out, maybe, but that's all I can gather."

"Jack told me himself that Cool World is real."

"I'll have to take that with a grain of salt," I scoffed.

"Listen. This is important. Do you know anything else about Holli Would? Anything at all?"

"Not really. I'm still not convinced that the woman in the news stories if fictional. What I can't figure out why a real woman would want to name herself after a comic book character. Especially one as ridiculous as her."

"It's not completely unreasonable," Jessica said.

"So you admit it. You're really her."

"No. I said I wished I was her. There's a difference. I can wish to be Sandra Bollock but that doesn't mean I am her." She sighed. "So you don't know anything about her at all."

"Sorry. I was just a baby at the time."

I could tell by the look on her face that she had just received a flash of inspiration. "I got it! We'll check into the Union Plaza and take a look around!"

I swallowed. "We?"

"It's the next logical step. When I was alone, I didn't dare try it. The rooms closest to the roof are honeymoon suites, and they have guards patrolling the hallways, you know, because of the incident. Maybe now that you're here..."

I shook my head violently. "Unh-uh. No way."

"I'm not asking you for sex. We just have to look like we're supposed to be there, that's all. And I, um, need some money."

I grimaced. "How much money."

The Union Plaza was a tall building, rows of windows separated by pillar-like stripes of concrete and metal running from the top of the casino to the roof, where dying neon signs flashed their images.

The interior, due to all the remodeling over the years, had the same bland homogenized layout as any other hotel in the United States. Once you got through the casino and past the check in area, the rooms were all the same, the hallway conformed to a generic template, the carpets a mellow green in uninteresting patterns. Dull confetti wallpaper, framed pictures on the walls not reflecting anything in particular about the place in which it stood. Abstract paintings, western landscapes, that kind of thing.

When I stuck the card key into the door to the suite and looked around, I wondered again how I let myself get talked into this.

There was only one bed, a fuzzy red-purple thing, framed by purple curtains, mirrors and neon. The moment the two of us set foot inside the room, people would already be making assumptions.

Jessica carried her suitcase into the room while I nervously seated myself on the bed, staring at the fake gold statues of Venus and Cupid, the waiting hot tub.

I stared out a big circular window, more than likely mirrored on the outside.

I could see we were an incredibly far distance from the ground. I didn't relish seeing the roof.

"I'm going to change clothing," Jessica said, stepping into the bathroom with the luggage.

I flopped on the bed, staring at the ceiling. My reflection stared down at me from a full length mirror.

Tasteless. Completely and utterly tasteless.

For a moment, I thought I saw something peering at me from the corner of the glass, something in an unnaturally bright peach, but then it vanished. I figured it was only a product of my overworked imagination.

"What do you think?"

I sat up, turned my head, and found my mouth hanging open in shock.

I thought she intended to change into jeans. Instead, she strode out of the bathroom in a blue silk teddy and garters, stockings and heels.

I was so startled that I jumped backwards, rolled off the bed, and hit my head on the floor.

"No offense," I blurted. "But no thanks. Like I said, you were in high school or something when I was a baby. I must be going."

I threw the door open, stumbling into the hallway.

That's when I saw the giant cartoon mouse fiddling with the ice machine.

The moment our eyes met, it cried "Shit!" and scurried away.

I tried to give chase, but the moment I made the first jogging steps, I felt a small hand grabbing my collar. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the blue silk.

"We're consenting adults," she purred.

I reddened. "But-!"

And I was dragged back into the suite.


	4. Chapter 4: Achu

"I saw a cartoon mouse," I cried as Jessica slammed the door shut.

"Sure." She undid my tie. "Anything to distract me from this."

She shoved me against the wall, kissing me.

"Honest to God!" I shouted as I pulled away from her. "It was real! It was playing with the ice machine!"

"Let's play with something else." She unbuttoned my suit coat.

I had fallen backwards over the bed the first time I'd seen her outfit, but it was not merely for sexual reasons.

As my eyes traveled downwards, I quickly came to the conclusion that she wasn't merely obsessed, she was insane.

Instead of letting the airy silk be itself and cling to her curves, she had sown _patches_ all over it.

Daisy Duck.

Roger Rabbit.

Hello Kitty.

Fifi Skunk.

There were others. She must have been planning something like this for months. Unless those were her normal evening clothes...

The one sown onto the front of her panties was (what else) a cartoon beaver.

"That's a tad immature...the patches, I mean..."

Jessica ran a hand down her outfit. "Let's _make_ it mature."

"Are you trying to make yourself feel young, or are you just trying to make me think of you as a kid?"

She shrugged. "Maybe both?"

"I know. You're trying to make me more comfortable with this by trying to relate to a younger generation. That's it, isn't it?"

"Maybe I just want you to _feel my patches_!"

She pressed me against the wall, tasting all the parts of my mouth.

"Let's not do this," I protested. "I know, I know, we're technically consenting adults, but..."

"See? You said it yourself. _We're consenting_. _We_ implies _you_, which means you just gave your consent. What more do we need to discuss?"

"Actually," I said. "I didn't mean it that way. I never actually gave my consent, and I don't feel that this is the right time-"

"You're not gay, are you?"

I shook my head.

"I'm not _that_ ugly, am I?"

"Why do you want me? What is it that attracts you to me so much?"

She threw my coat aside, unbuttoning my shirt. "You know more than you're telling about Cool World."

"I'm not," I said. "Me and dad weren't even close."

She kissed me some more, removing the rest of the buttons. "Someone's been making Cool World comics. Continuing the series. Even without your father being here. Care to explain?"

"It wasn't me. I don't know any more than you do about that."

"A pity." She unbuckled my belt.

"Look. You think I'd be asking you all these dumb questions and being skeptical about it if I knew something?"

She kissed me again, sliding my shirt off. "Well, maybe you don't know anything, but you have your father's blood..."

"And you think by bearing some, you can open a gate to Cool World."

She gave my pants a tug, and they slid to the floor, leaving me standing in my boxer shorts. "You got a better idea?"

When I got my lips free enough to talk, I said, "As fun as this is, I actually _do_ think there is a better way."

She pressed her body against mine, sliding her hands down my shorts. "You sure?"

I pulled her hand away. "Positive. I wasn't joking about the mouse."

I pulled my pants back on, haphazardly tugging my shirt around my shoulders as I drew the door open.

Jessica was throwing on one of those filmy silk robes with the fur trim all around it. I had more important things to think about than her manner of undress, though it wasn't far from my mind.

I stared into the hallway, checking from the left to the right, but I saw no sign of the mouse.

"Anything?" Jessica breathed into my neck.

"No."

"You _really are_ gay, aren't you?"

Not replying, I crept down the hallway, checking the spot where the creature had been carelessly poking the ice dispensing lever. Melting cubes lay scattered all over the carpet.

"This is where I saw it," I said. "It said `shit' then ran off."

She ran her hands across the machine, gently touching parts of the mechanism.

"What are you doing now?" I asked.

"I'm looking for toon residue. Maybe some of that black stuff..."

She frowned, pulling her hand away.

"I don't know," I sighed. "I'm going to take a look around." And I crept to the end of the hallway, looking around the corner.

Jessica's heels clopped loudly as she followed. I scowled at her.

"I can hear you coming a mile away. I know it's sexy, but could you _please_ remove that footwear?"

Grinning, she nodded, yanking them off. "Anything yet?"

"No!" I hissed.

We passed a security guard, an old guy, roughly in his sixties or seventies. When he passed us, he just chuckled.

"Don't enjoy yourself _too much_, or it'll get old by the time that second anniversary rolls along."

Shuddering, I gave him a nod.

"Don't worry. We're not the type of couple that gets easily bored," Jessica said.

I cringed.

We waited for the man to pass, then stared at the end of the hallway.

"Anything now?"

"Not since the last time you asked," I muttered.

We reached a door with a security lock.

"Banning people from admiring the view," I said. "A shame."

Jessica frowned at the keypad, practically sticking her nose into the buttons. "Definitely a shame."

I blinked, and for a moment, her lingerie appeared to be made of bright blue paint.

It flickered, reverting to silk and patches, ceasing to be animated.

"Did you see that?" I said.

She nodded. "I first found out about it when I was sewing the patches on. Only does it once every thirty minutes. I timed it. Pretty sexy, huh?"

"What other toys do you got?"

She reddened. "Well..."

Imagining her `toys' to be in the adult category, I blurted, "Don't answer that."

I frowned. "You didn't even wash it, did you?"

"What, and lose the magic?"

Noting my look of disgust, she said, "This was worn on Holli's body! You can't wash something like that! It's like the holy grail!"

"I don't think that's a fair comparison," I said.

"Regardless of what you think, this outfit is _special_. I'll never do anything to weaken its power."

I thought about the old body sweat and musty `tuna' smells it probably still retained and shuddered. "Which is why we should sleep in separate beds."

"It's not as bad as you think. Whenever it becomes animated, I can feel the fabric renewing on my skin. It's like the substance from the other world flash burns all the bacteria away."

"Sure," I groaned. "And the dirty towels I put in the gym locker in high school were perfectly clean after I left them in there a month and let the mold fall off."

"See?" she said with a grin. "You're not a germaphobe, either."

Rolling my eyes, I turned a corner, continuing our search.

Soon we had gone a full circuit around the square of hotel suites and soda machines, passing the elevators.

Nothing.

The door to the suite was closed, and, worse, I didn't have the key.

"Where's the card key?"

"I thought _you_ had it," she said.

I sighed in frustration. "Great. We're locked out."

Before I could say anything about the check-in desk, Jessica shrugged off her robe and kissed me.

"What are you doing?" I blurted as she slid my pants to the floor. "We can't be doing this out here! Someone will see us!"

"So? Maybe they'll open the room!"

I blushed. "C'mon. We could get in trouble."

"We're right in front of the suite," she said as she rubbed against my lap. "What are they going to say?"

"You're crazy."

"And it gets you excited. I can feel it."

"Jessica!" I cried. "Stop!"

"Look," she said, giving me a kiss. "According to paranormal literature, ghosts and spiritual entities never appear when you're looking for them. That's why you need to look busy doing something else!"

"You sure have some lame excuses for getting in my pants," I said.

She gave me some tongue. "And you don't care. Admit it."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a pastel colored blob.

Turning my head slightly, I could see it was the mouse.

It appeared to be some sort of baby, for it wore a diaper and carried around a bottle.

In fact, I thought I recognized it from an actual cartoon show. Maybe _Baby Looney_ _Toons_ or something, though since I couldn't stomach the program, I would have only recognized _that_ from hospital smocks in the pediatrics ward.

"Don't look now," I whispered. "But we're being watched. By someone animated."

Jessica playfully nibbled my ear lobe. "Probably wants a free show."

She hooked a finger into the waistband of my boxers, tugging down.

"Let's not disappoint them."

"No," I murmured as she pulled my shorts and inch lower.

"Your body's saying yes."

"The last time I checked, that line won't hold up in court."

"How about this one, then?" she breathed, pulling on the boxers some more. "That creature over there is going to run away if we don't do something to _sustain its interest_."

The cartoon rodent stroked the front of its diaper as it watched us. I suddenly felt sick.

"What about knock knock jokes or juggling? It works in the cartoons."

She unsnapped something between her legs, and I saw she had on the kind of panties that opened in the middle, for convenience. The flaps of fabric dangled invitingly.

"Let's not give it any reasons to go away."

I thought for sure we were going to take things to their natural conclusion.

I guess, if I were truly honest with myself, I wouldn't have minded (well, except for the dirty lingerie).

However, at the precise moment she had my shorts pulled down to my knees, positioning herself for entry, I heard a sniffle, then a loud "wachoo!"

All of a sudden, we were thrown down the hallway by a strong, hurricane force wind.

Our bodies slammed into a sheetrock wall, which crumbled and fell inward with the force of our impact.

"Bless me," the mouse muttered.

It was then that I recognized our animated voyeur. Little Sneezer from _Tiny Toons_.

Little Sneezer _had blown us through a hotel wall_.

Almost completely naked.

Through a wall.

Damn, I thought. What kind of screwed up planet are we living on?

We lay sprawled in a dirty old hotel room with peeling wallpaper partially defaced by cartoon drawings.

We coughed in plaster dust, staring at each other in amusement.

Jessica laughed as I pulled my shorts back up. "Was it good for you?"


	5. Chapter 5: Bubble Bomb

I chuckled as I watched Jessica dusting off her lingerie. "Now you'll _have_ to clean it!"

She frowned as she snapped her panties back up. "I suppose I _could_ take them to a dry cleaner..."

We brushed ourselves off some more and stood up, coughing as we took in our surroundings. It seemed we had broken open a sort of time capsule.

The room had sort of an old western motif. Canopied four poster bed, polished mahogany dressers and end tables in a French style, wardrobe instead of a closet. A thick layer of dust had settled over everything, indicating that nobody had been there for decades.

"I'm not sure how we're going to explain this to the hotel owner," I said. "I don't think I have nearly enough to cover this much damage."

"Put it on your credit card," Jessica shrugged.

"Yeah," I said facetiously. "That sounds like a freaking _brilliant_ idea. Once they find out I can't afford to pay it back, that'll drop my credit score from seven hundred to, I don't know, _three_?"

"Just an idea," she said.

"Remind me to never cosign a loan for you."

She slipped a finger inside my elastic waistband. "So you're _that_ kind of husband, huh?"

"What?" I stammered. "Look, we're not even-"

She stretched my waistband out and let go, creating a cloud of dust as it snapped back.

"You're crazy," I said. "Maybe it's a good thing we didn't go any-"

She jumped on me, throwing her arms around my neck, legs around my waist. "You sure?"

I blushed. "Uh..."

"That's what I thought," she purred. She pressed her lips to my neck, licking my skin.

She grimaced, sticking out her tongue. "Bleah! You're all dusty!"

Jessica hopped off me, strolling up to the bed.

She idly ran her fingers through the dust, making little lines and squiggles.

"Anyways, we're closer to our goal. Let's take a look around."

"Wonder why they walled it off instead of remodeling it," I said.

She didn't answer. She was too busy staring at the graffiti.

Near the hole we found a charcoal sketch of a French clown juggling balls. Jessica placed her hand on the wall, sliding her fingers over the corner of the crushed coal.

All of a sudden, her silk teddy flashed a brilliant pastel blue, becoming cartoony.

"Thirty minutes already?" I said.

She laughed. "Hardly."

When she took her hand away, her outfit turned real once more.

"That's funny."

She touched the wall, and she was back to wearing ink and paint.

"Somehow this wall is..._stabilizing it_," she said.

And so it was. Her blue silk number stayed animated for an entire minute.

I slid my hand down the back. The substance felt like plastic. "That's amazing!"

My hand was on her rear, but she paid me no attention. She only pointed at the clown.

"Look!"

My hand dropped to my side. The clown was _moving_.

A charcoal sketch.

On a wall.

Moving.

Balanced on a unicycle, it juggled its patterned balls in an arc above its head as it turned the pedals.

When Jessica's finger slid across the path of the juggled objects, the dropped from the space above the clown's head, falling onto the thin line that represented the floor.

The clown, looking annoyed, got down from his unicycle, bending over to pick them back up.

The character froze as Jessica took her hand away, her lingerie turning normal.

Her hand slid to the next vignette, a sketch of a simple cube. Again, she was wearing cartoon clothes.

"It's the drawings," she said. "There's something unusual about them."

Her hand disappeared into the wall like it were made of liquid. When she brought it out, I saw that her fingers were clutching a small block.

"This is literally a simple geometric figure! If the measurements of all the sides are identical, this could be a mathematician's wet dream! You'd prove that everything in the universe has a mathematical order!"

She tossed the block to me, but it turned into a piece of wallpaper in my hands.

The drawing next to that was a cartoon cat putting a cartoon mouse between two slices of bread with an olive and all the fixings. The scene came to life when Jessica touched it, but unlike all those _Tom and Jerry_ shows I'd seen as a kid, the cat actually ate the mouse, and it stayed eaten. Gore dripped from the cat's mouth.

We both laughed, but it was uneasy mirth. It's one thing to wish for the cat to win for once. It's quite another to watch a cartoon that looks like something on _The_ _Twilight Zone_. I think we were both close to screaming.

"Moving on..." Jessica muttered, removing her hand from the wall.

Deciding she'd had enough fun, I stepped ahead of my strangely clad girlfriend, examining a hyperrealistic drawing of a cat.

The moment my hand touched the charcoal, an orange ball of hair exploded from the wall with a frightened meow, knocking me back on my ass.

A real cat.

Just jumped out of the wall.

The creature bolted from the room like its tail was on fire.

"How odd," said Jessica. "It's almost as if someone..._put it in there_."

"Your guess is as good as mine," I said.

A still life of a bowl of fruit hand been drawn in the corner. Jessica walked around me, placing her hands on it, and out came a crystal bowl filled with apples, oranges and a banana.

She took one bite of an apple and spat it out. "Wax."

She tossed it on the bed, stirring up a cloud of dust. Unlike the cube, it remained...a bowl of wax fruit.

We stared at the item above the end table with puzzlement.

A drawing of a closed window.

Once Jessica's hand touched the sketch, the window gained definition, projecting from the wall like a real window. The frame was wooden and varnished, just like the one opposite the bed.

The smallness of the window was its main fault, for one could not fit anything larger than a dog's head through the opening.

Still, what we saw through the glass astonished and tantalized us.

We were looking at a scene straight out of _The Smurfs_ cartoon. Little mushroom shaped huts with polka dotted roofs and crooked chimneys. We saw no Smurfs anywhere around, but the clouds were moving, the grass waving in the breeze, and across the way we could even see animated steam rising from a pie in someone's window.

Navigating around the bed, we came across something even stranger: A realistic drawing of a folder, with an army stamp and serial number across the tab.

Operation Blackout, it said.

I tried to pull it out, but nothing happened. Only Ms. Glowing Lingerie was able to accomplish the feat.

I peered over her shoulder as she opened the battered tan piece of card stock, flipping through the papers.

The first couple pages consisted of a dossier about a Professor Heinreich Baubelsen, AKA Doctor Bubbles, AKA Professor Whiskers, German ex-patriot, board member of the Nazi V-2 Rocket program near the end of the Second World War.

A monochrome photograph showed a bald little man with large round glasses.

A colleague of Einstein, this professor contributed several top secret weapons to the United States atomic research department, creating a rift between he and the pacifist genius, inspiring the latter's now famous letter of apology regarding nuclear technology.

The next section was a stapled stack of papers describing Operation Blackout.

Blackout's purpose was to disable all electrical devices within a ten mile radius of enemy territory. If successful, they intended to drop a warhead containing the technology into the middle of Tokyo. The plan was drafted roughly the same time as the blueprint for Little Boy, but it employed slightly different technology, based upon questionable scientific theories, such as a muddled early version of String Theory.

Laboratory tests, though mostly inconclusive, produced enough unusual interference with electronic devices that the Professor got the green light and a bomb was built.

Nicknamed the "Bubble Bomb," the warhead was dropped at White Sands testing facility on April 10th, 1945, only a few short months before the first successful detonation of atomic weaponry in Trinity, New Mexico.

The results for the Bubble Bomb were less than impressive. Electronic devices remained in operation. A black and white television was found to be showing a color picture, but it was later dismissed as a distortion brought on by heat damage.

Five iron railroad ties, or _spikes_, were also reported to be giving off an eerie unnatural glow.

"The spike of power!" Jessica cried. "There's more than one of them! This explains everything! One's under the prison, one's here..."

"And the rest is speculation," I finished. "I mean, granted, we're reading a drawing. But we've yet to see an actual spike, even here."

She grabbed my hand, pressing it to her cartoon bra, which somehow hadn't reverted to its real counterpart. "Isn't this enough proof? And what about that cat? The juggler?"

"I admit _that is_ pretty convincing. But it doesn't prove there is a spike here. Maybe the room is...just...paranormal."

The next section of the booklet consisted of detailed sketches, cityscapes, building interiors, cars, and several pieces of paper filled with scrawled handwriting. That last item was German, so I couldn't read it.

Then we had a blueprint of a missile, along with a complicated formula I couldn't decipher. Several key portions had been clipped out with a scissors for some reason.

Jessica closed the folder, dropping it on the bed.

"_Five_," she breathed. "How exciting!"

A few feet down from the folder, we found a life sized drawing of a door. Like everything else in the room, it responded to Jessica's touch, this item materializing into a flat shaded unnaturally lit image with a large bulbous knob and a small keyhole.

We both tried pulling on the thing, turning the knob back and forth, but it only stretched the door like taffy.

The moment we stopped trying, we saw a mouth and a pair of googly eyes appear on its surface, looking rather bored.

"Where's the key, buddy?" it said.

"Key?" I said.

"Mmm hmm," the door replied, its large eyes bugging out as they traveled up and down my companion's body.

The mouth let out a wolf whistle, then disappeared.

The eyes, giving her a wink, also vanished an instant later.

"Well," Jessica groaned, hands on her hips. "A key. Where would I find that?"

"It's a cartoon," I said. "And it digs you. Maybe you can just, you know, _sit on its face_ or something?"

The door was only a drawing now, but I could pretty well guess its reaction.

"No way," she said. "I'm not whoring out my body just to get into cartoon land."

I coughed in protest.

"I have lozenges back in the room..."

I just shook my head. "Let's look around. Maybe we'll find something."

The dressers were full of musty moth eaten clothing. Sweaters and slacks. Kind of frumpy college professor type stuff.

It amused me to find garters in there. The owner, I guess, lived in an era where men wore such things all the time, maybe because they didn't have elastic in their socks or something.

Feeling self conscious, I actually dusted off a pair of pants and a button shirt, but found them a tight fit, like I had slipped into something owned by Pee Wee Herman. Still, I decided to wear them anyway, in case the security guard came by.

I found handkerchiefs monogrammed with the letters H.B., but no keys.

Jessica, in the meantime, had opened a nightstand, setting a bible aside to dig around underneath.

When her hand came out, she was holding a glowing gun.

She pointed it at the wardrobe, pulling the trigger.

In a flash, a cartoon toilet plunger popped out, blasting across the room.

The plunger suckered onto the side of the wardrobe, then, without warning, the gun retracted the rope, throwing Jessica headfirst into the wood paneling.

The moment she collided with it and fell to the floor, a cluster of tweeting bluebirds circled her head.

"Drew! Are you seeing this? I'm getting little birdies!"

"Yeah," I said. "I see them, all right."

One of the birds looked at her cleavage and gave a low whistle.

"This is incredible!" Jessica cried. "Where's my camera?"

I frowned. "In...the room?"

"Damn. What about a cel phone? You had a cel phone in your pocket, didn't you?"

"Uh..." I glanced around the room. "I don't even know where my _pants_ are."

The birds flew in lower circles, landing on her breasts. She giggled.

I heard another one of them whistle, then a larger one, strangely enough, went "Rrrow," causing the other birds to stare at him.

It just shrugged its wings, as if to say, "What."

Jessica held out a finger, and one perched on it, whistling that little ditty they keep whistling on _The Hunger Games_.

The second hopped higher on her finger, chirping the instrument line to _Rockin' Robin_.

The large one hopped on her knuckle, whistling _Patience_ by Guns N' Roses.

Again, it got stared at.

"Are those the Car-X birds?" I asked.

Jessica squinted at them. "I...don't know."

The birds turned around to stare at me, cocking their heads in puzzlement, pointing blue wing tips at their little breasts.

Then the fat one sang, "Save a bundle with your Car-X man!" in a deep baritone.

I smacked my head. "Oh great. Just what we need. Animated commercial sponsors brought to life."

On cue, an orange head popped out of the wardrobe, yelling, "Ya-hoo! I'm kookoo for Cocoa Puffs!"

The door slammed shut an instant later.

I heard someone pounding on the floor, and a muffled voice yelling, "Turn off your TV!"

"Isn't this great?" Jessica giggled as the birds hopped back on her cleavage.

"You're...just going to let those things _sit there_?"

She gave me a look that seemed to say "Are you kidding."

"When's the last time you had something animated sitting on your breasts?"

"Well, uh, no," I admitted.

The smallest bird stuck out its tongue at me.

In cartoons, this was the big guy's cue to chase the bird around and try to strangle it. I just rolled my eyes. "Let's keep looking around."

She pointed at the nightstand. "What's that?"

"It's a little dresser," I said.

"No, I mean, I see something behind it."

We pulled the nightstand back and found a drawing of a safe.

"I feel like I'm playing _Paper Mario_," I muttered.

"`_You do me a solid, I do you a solid_,'" Jessica said.

That comment went way over my head. "What?"

"_Kingdom Hospital_. Never mind."

She knelt in front of the drawing, touching her hand to the wall, and an animated safe popped out.

She tried to pull the handle, but it was locked.

"Great," I said. "What are we going to do with that?"

"The more important question is why that folder was out here when it could have been stored inside this safe?"

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe because people don't normally put on cartoon lingerie and pull drawings off walls?"

She gave me a funny look, then tried turning the dial.

The moment both her hands left the wall, the safe snapped back like a spring, becoming a drawing again.

"That's funny," she said. "I didn't have a problem when I was looking at that folder..."

"That's because the folder was real to start with," I suggested. "And the safe is animated. You were touching the wall those other times. Even with the cube, I think your foot was touching it. Need some help?"

She brought the object back out of the wall. "Do you even know how to crack a safe?"

I shook my head. "But it's a cartoon safe. It shouldn't be that hard, should it?"

Jessica paused and thought a minute. "Generally, cartoon safes are opened by dropping them out windows."

"Oh no," I said. "If we do it that way, we'll probably send someone to the Emergency Room."

"Why? It's not a real safe."

"What about that toilet plunger gun? Did hitting that closet feel good?"

"Not...especially," she admitted. "But I got birdies!"

"Do you want someone's corpse with birdies around it?"

"Okay, okay," she sighed. "Point taken."

The moment I touched the knob, Jessica's birds fluttered off her breasts, landing on the safe, and the large one began singing.

"To everything, turn, turn, turn, turn," the bird sang.

"That's ironic," I said.

"You think it's a hint?" Jessica said.

"I'm not sure I'd read that far into it."

When I turned the dial, the bird sang again. "I turn right, then I turn around, turn left, then I turn around, turning, and turning, and stop."

"I guess it _is_ a hint," I muttered.

When I turned the dial right, the big one sang _The Loneliest Number _by Three Dog Night, so I put it on 1. I turned it left, and the bird sang a jazz song called _Sixteen Different Ways_. Turning right yielded "When I was twenty one, it was a very good year..."

After a few more games of musical numbers, the door popped open, and we could view its contents.

A stack of paper bills, all bearing the likeness of Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse, several blueprints, including the missing squares from the ones in the folder, blueprints for devices whose purpose I couldn't fathom, including a modified version of the missile, a real handgun, complete with holster and bullets, and a wallet stuffed with vintage currency.

I pocketed the wallet, then threw the rest of the stuff on the bed.

"No key," Jessica said.

"Yeah."

She got up, pulling back the other end table.

"Here!" she laughed, holding aloft a jangling key ring.

When we stuck the key in the cartoon door, the keyhole chewed on it, bit it off the ring, and swallowed it. "Delicious," it said.

"You may pass," the door said, swinging open.

Strangely enough, it turned into a real door when this happened.

"There it is!" Jessica squealed. "The gateway to Cool World!"

We were looking into a painting of a dark alleyway, where a blue animated cat with a bandaged tail was digging fish bones out of a garbage can.

I stuck out my hand to touch the picture, but I only encountered air.

"It's real!" Jessica shouted with giddy excitement. "It's really real!"

She jumped through the doorway, clomping down the illustration of pavement.

She looked bizarre in that setting, a flesh and blood person in a shadowy world made of brush strokes, clad in bright blue paint.

"Hey!" I yelled. "What do you think you're doing!"

"What does it look like?" she called back. "You coming?"

I just stared through the door.

Just then, I heard the chirp of one of those walkie talkie cel phones behind me.

"It's the couple from 320," a voice was saying. "The man's still here."

A pregnant pause followed this, in which I could hear static and a few tinny mumbles.

I glanced back and saw it was the security guard that had teased us earlier.

The stranger narrowed his eyes at me as he lifted his phone to his mouth, pushing a button. "Could you come up and take a look at this?"


	6. Chapter 6: Kanifkey

I felt a meaty hand clamp onto my shoulder.

"Sir, I need you to come downstairs to answer a few questions."

"Officer," I said. "If I had any, I'd give them to you right now."

Retirement Age Security Guard just shook his head.

"Well, you'd better come up with something by the time we have our little sit-down with Mr. Williams."

I frowned at the man, annoyed at the fact we were having this conversation right in front of a doorway to a fictional universe.

"Officer..." I glanced at his name tag. "_Kanifkey_. Sir. Being as we are standing next to a dimensional portal to a cartoon world, which although hard to believe, is plainly verifiable by sight, would it be unreasonable for you to believe that I was not the party responsible for demolishing that wall?"

Kanifkey pulled me backwards. "We'll talk about it downstairs."

That was cop talk for "no."

"Look," I said. "This wasn't my idea."

"Son, if you want to throw your fiancee under the bus, it's your prerogative, but the simple fact is, _she ain't here_. _You are_. A bird in the hand..."

I cringed at the thought of Jessica's breast perch, and how moronic I'd sound if I told him the truth.

"Sir, as you can probably tell from my slight build and lack of tools that I am woefully unequipped to demolish any wall."

He paused to stare at me, as if considering my words, then tugged me a little further in the direction of the elevators.

"A cartoon character," I said. "From that door. It sneezed. That's why there's a hole."

Kanifkey rolled his eyes. "I like your previous explanation better."

"I didn't exactly give one," I countered.

"Yeah. I liked that one better."

Throughout the course of this little exchange, I could see a glowing white shape behind the officer, but wasn't sure what it was, and didn't think it very useful to my situation. For this reason I had been ignoring it up until that point, irritated by how useless cartoons were for legal matters.

"I can't afford to repair the wall," I said.

"Then you'll go to jail for destroying private property."

"Say, hypothetically, that I manage to take out a loan or something. May I bring an independent contractor to the site so I can at least save a few thousand dollars?"

Kanifkey shrugged. "You'll have to take that up with the boss."

When the officer put a hand to his hip, I caught a glimpse of a white rodent face through the crook of his arm.

Little Sneezer.

As I stared at it, the creature smiled at me, or, at least I thought it smiled.

"Officer," I said, pointing at the mouse. "There's your culprit right there. He's small and animated. Just turn around and look."

Kanifkey just laughed at me. "Kid, that's the oldest trick in the book. You must think I'm a real simpleton, to fall for a gag like that."

I heard someone sniffling.

I pointed at the mouse again. "But-"

That earned me another eye roll. "Kid, if you want to make me think there's something behind me, at least tell me something _convincing_!"

"Wahhh..."

Little Sneezer gasped, holding his nose.

My eyes widened.

"I just remembered," I stammered. "I gotta get my wallet. You know, credit card, driver's license..."

Kanifkey nodded and let me go. "No funny stuff."

I grabbed hold of the closest secure object, the animated door knob.

Okay, so it was secure-_ish_.

"Wait a minute," the man said. "If you don't have a wallet, what's that in your pock-"

A second later, Officer Kanifkey was flying through the air, making contact with one of the bed posts and crashing through the back wall.

"It's too dusty in here," the mouse muttered, scampering off.

Through the opening, I could see the roof, and the scaffolding that supported the hotel's giant sign.

For a moment, I was tempted to go out there, and see that so-called `spike' Jessica kept going on about, but then I decided that was her fool mission, not mine.

I didn't really care about cartoons that much, I just didn't want to go to jail. And my primary means of escape from the situation did not involve a spike.

Under my hand, the doorknob was losing color, and..._quality_, the door itself rapidly becoming flat as paper. It reminded me of sketches of doors that architects used in concept designs.

I touched the image of the alleyway, but my fingers, to my alarm, encountered resistance as the animated street scene continued to revert to a drawing on the wall.

Soon it would just be me, the hotel manager, and the civil and/or Federal courts.

I guessed it would be Federal, considering what Sneezer just did to Rent-A-Cop.

I pushed my hand against the surface, but it didn't yield.

"No!" I cried, pounding the wall with my fists.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a white glow. Glancing over, I noticed a four fingered cartoon hand holding the door, which caused the object to shimmer and re-solidify around the places it touched.

"Whatcha doin'?" a squeaky voice said.

"Uh...trying not to go to jail?"

The mouse brought its glowing face up to mine. "You trying to go in?"

I forced a smile. "Maybe?"

Its eyes were black dots drawn on a pair of circles, but I still felt unnerved when they looked into mine.

"So you're not going to go in there...to sleep with your girlfriend?"

I swallowed. "She's not-"

I stopped myself, realizing what a little pervert Sneezer was. "...Yeah. I'm totally going to bone her."

"Okay," he said. "I'll let you in. But you gotta promise me you'll let me watch."

I grimaced in disgust. "Why don't you just, I don't know, _get your own girlfriend_?"

Instead of answering, the mouse just retreated a few inches and said, "Do you want to bone your girlfriend nor not?"

The question took me aback. Frankly, I wasn't sure if I wanted Jessica that much. While fairly attractive, she was also psychotic, which wasn't what I wanted in a long term relationship.

But, well, she had sort of..._grown_ on me, and she had made things...rather _exciting_...

And let's not forget, there was _no rule_ _that said_ _I couldn't break my promise_.

I sighed in resignation. "Fine, fine. I promise I'll let you watch. Now will you help me through this door before I end up in jail?"

Because the mouse was too short to reach my back, it put its paws on my butt, giving me a forceful shove.

For a few moments, I felt nothing but embarrassment, and my face pressing against old wallpaper, but then the drawing shimmered, and it was like I was sticking my face through a wall of gelatin. I momentarily couldn't breathe.

I tumbled forward through the barrier so suddenly that I fell flat on my face.

My nose was literally stuck in a painting. For a dirty, slimy looking stretch of brick, it smelled remarkably clean.

Gasping for breath, I staggered to my feet, gawking at the surreal universe I had stumbled into.

The buildings were matte paintings, dark and foreboding. The blue cat was still digging through trash, eating fish bones and tossing old boots on the ground.

Up ahead was an intersection, seemingly empty. Across the street, I could just barely see a row of stores and restaurants.

I turned around and looked back just in time to see Sneezer stepping through the gate, shutting the door behind him.

The moment the door met the frame, it disappeared, reverting to a section of painted brick wall.

I was stuck there.

Possibly forever.

Sneezer ran up to me, slapping me on the rear. "Go get `em, tiger!"


	7. Chapter 7: Officer Harris

Following Jessica's lead, I walked to the end of the alleyway, turning right at the corner.

It appeared to be daytime.

To my left, across the street, I could see a deli, a dress shop, a cheese factory, and a store that said Acme across the front window. To my right, I saw a flower shop, and, a few feet ahead, some sort of cafe called The Spot.

As I walked, I noticed I had a soundtrack. Everywhere I went, there was music playing, and it appeared to be composed by one of those uninspired hacks who just throw compositions together to suit a scene, not caring that the collection of musical noises did not equate to real music.

What made it worse were the ever present sounds of screaming, explosions, and other `humorous' effects. The result was akin to the monotonous loop of incidental music you get when you leave a 3D video game about cartoons running while you microwave a burrito.

I stared as a cartoon old woman pushed a stroller past me, a stroller bearing a large black cat with a baby bonnet and milk bottle.

I didn't see Jessica anywhere. I stopped in my tracks.

I peered through the windows of the flower shop, but I could see nothing but Dot from the _Animaniacs_ and the white bespectacled rabbit from all those _Sweet Pickles_ books pruning flowers.

In the cafe, all I could see were a bunch of weird looking animated characters eating lunch.

I tried to cross the street and look in the other windows, but the moment my feet touched the pavement, a hundred cars and semis appeared out of nowhere and tried to run me down. They of course vanished just as quickly when I got back on the sidewalk.

I still think this street exists in both worlds. I'm certain I spent my freshman year in high school wearing a cast over my arm because of it.

"What's the hold up?" Sneezer said impatiently.

I felt like telling him to go get some cheese across the street, but, well, I would have been in jail if it hadn't been for him, so I decided to be nice.

"Sorry, pal," I groaned. "If you're wanting to see some action, you're going to have to wait. I don't know where the hell she is."

Sneezer paused. "Is she wearing any perfume?"

I shook my head. "Only what she was born with." Which is pretty sexy by itself, I reflected.

The mouse frowned. "That _does_ make it difficult."

We stared at our surroundings in silence for a moment.

"Yo. Sneez_er._" I had almost shortened his name to Sneeze, but I've watched enough cartoons to know that's a bad idea. I might as well go into the flower shop and say "Polka dot." "Have you seen my wallet laying around anywhere? Like somewhere on the hotel floor?"

Sneezer pulled a real leather wallet out of his diaper. "You mean this?"

"Yeah," I said. "I think that's it. Open it up."

The mouse did so, looking inside, but he didn't allow me to see the contents. "I opened it," he said.

I groaned. "Show _me_."

He closed the wallet. "Why."

I was getting a little peeved. If I were animated, my face probably would have been turning an actual red color. "_Because_. How do I know you didn't just pilfer someone else's wallet and claim that it's mine?"

"And how do I know that you're really going to find your girlfriend and bone her?"

I smacked my face. "Who else _would_ I bone here? You think I'm going to grab that old granny over there and go to town?"

Sneezer stared at me like I might. "That would be..._interesting_."

Luckily, the old bag was down the block, and as funny as it would have been, she didn't come back and slap me with her umbrella.

I rolled my eyes. "The point is, she's the only human in town. There's nobody else here I'd really want to bang."

"_I can think of a few doodles_," Sneezer said.

"Would you actually _care_ if I did them instead of my girlfriend?"

Sneezer shook his head. "As long as I can watch."

"Fine," I said. "Whatever. You still got a front row seat, if and when I..._whatever_. Let me see the wallet."

"No," he said.

"Why not."

"Because you didn't say please."

I sighed. "Pretty please with sugar on top. Show me the damn wallet."

Sneezer showed me the back.

"The inside please."

"You promise you'll do her?"

"_Eagerly._"

Sneezer flashed the interior, then closed it again.

It was enough. The placement of the debit and credit cards was exactly how I remembered it, my driver's license probably concealed behind the Price Chopper card.

"There," said the mouse. "You saw it. Now get going."

"I'd be glad to oblige, but I don't know where she got off to. If you know something I don't, now is the time to tell me."

The mouse paused for a minute, looking around. He was just as clueless as I was.

Noticing the bulb nosed head of Inspector Gadget's police chief peeking out of a flower bed, I crept closer to him.

I knew what abuse the guy received on a daily basis, so I decided to cut him some slack.

Pretending to smell some flowers, I whispered, "Pardon me, chief. Have you seen a non animated woman walking through here? Blue outfit? Kind of hard to miss?"

He nodded toward a place a little further up the street.

"Thanks," I said. "Your secret's safe with me."

Unfortunately, that's what the Inspector always said before he blew him up. I forgot all about that one.

Looking horrified, he shrunk back into the foliage.

I marched a block ahead, narrowly avoiding a collision with an orange cat running with a giant fish in its paws, _and _the angry owner of the fish market it stole from.

I felt like tripping the feline, but figured he would only hang around and harass me, so I let it go.

The chief's directions weren't exactly helpful. I found myself staring at storefronts again.

A pet store.

A barber shop, complete with singing quartet.

A detective agency.

Detective agency.

Although I was sure I'd regret it, I knocked on the door, and a dog in a trenchcoat let me in.

"Whatcha doin'?" Sneezer asked as I stepped across the threshold.

"What does it look like? Obviously I need someone to help me find my girlfriend."

I frowned at him. "You got two options. Give me back my wallet, or come along and pay the bill."

"You _have_ a wallet," he said.

"Well, okay. I'll try using that first, but if it doesn't work..."

Sneezer nodded. "Don't worry Drew. I'm not going away until you give me a show! You promised!"

I gawked at him. "I never told you my name!"

"It's on your driver's license," he shrugged.

It looked like the interior of one of those old film noir detective movies, kind of a late 1930's era type office design, the sort of place that you'd see Bogart stomping around in. No computers, just some file cabinets, an old desk with one of those lamps with the lozenge shaped shades, and a squeaky ceiling fan with wooden blades.

An unclothed rabbit with shark teeth was leaning back in a chair decorated by a gun holster, puffing on a cigar. A second desk, featuring a Singer typewriter, apparently belonged to the dog, for there were no Sexy Secretaries present.

It must have been a bit dusty, for the mouse was sniffling and rubbing its nose.

The moment he waddled close past the dog's desk, loud blaring alarms went off, and red and white lights flashed from the walls and ceiling.

The dog pointed to a sign.

"No Sneezers allowed!"

Sneezer burst into tears. "I just wanted to come along with Drew so I could watch him do the nasty with his girlfriend!"

"Awww..." the dog said, giving him a little hug. "Don't cry little guy!" He patted the mouse on the back.

"Don't let him fool you!" the rabbit barked. "Those sneezes are dangerous!"

"Wait outside," I told the mouse. "I'll only be a few minutes. It'll be fine."

Sam pushed Sneezer out the door like he were a wheeled dolly. The mouse stood on the sidewalk, staring through the doorway.

I turned to face the detectives.

"Sam and Max, I presume."

The rabbit suddenly jumped over the desk, grabbing me around the throat like he intended to choke me.

"How do you know who we are!"

"Uh..." I gasped, trying to think of an excuse better than "Saw you on DVD."

"It's written on the front window," the dog said cheerily.

"Oh." The rabbit let me go with an embarrassed grin.

Tee hee, I thought with annoyance.

Up until this point, I had been wondering why I had stopped watching cartoons, but now I remembered. Slapstick had ceased to be funny the moment I started high school and people started shoving me into lockers.

"You can tell a lot about a man by the way he strangles you!" the dog exclaimed.

I rolled my eyes.

"So," the rabbit said. "What can I do ya for?"

"I know I'm going to regret this," I said. "But I'd like to make an inquiry regarding your services..."

"Certainly!" Max grinned. "Inquiring minds want to know!"

Already I was suspecting why their show got canceled.

I dug in my pockets. "How much do you normally charge?"

"It's fr-" the dog began, but Max slapped a paw over his mouth.

"How much you got?"

"Uh..." I stammered, digging out the wallet.

I handed him a twenty.

The rabbit took it and frowned.

"It's vintage currency," I said. "It's actually worth a lot more than twenty."

"We'll take-"

The rabbit silenced the dog again. "This is noid currency. We're not allowed to accept it. It's the law."

"Noid?" I said.

Max poked me hard in the chest. "You. You're a noid."

"You're right about that," I said. "I'm not exactly happy."

Suddenly there was a psychiatrist's couch in the corner of the room, and he was shoving me onto it. The funny thing was, the couch was two dimensional before I landed on it.

In a flash, the two were dressed like Sigmund Freud.

The dog took out a notepad, jotting down a note. "_Not exactly happy_...And how long have you felt this way?"

I rolled my eyes. "_Awhile_."

The dog wrote something on his pad. "I see."

"I think it all started the moment I stepped in here and tried to ask you guys for help."

"_Does it bother you_ when I psychoanalyze you?"

"Yes," I groaned.

"_I see._"

Not wanting to be there all day, I said, "You know, I think I've felt this way before. In fact, I've been like this _ever since your show got canceled._"

"Ooooh!" the dog said, scribbling furiously on the pad.

The rabbit stared at the notes. "A breakthrough already?"

He threw the notepad away. "Remarkable! Sam, my friend, we're in the wrong business!"

"All right," I sighed. "Fine. I'm a `noid'."

"Would you like more time on the couch?" the rabbit asked.

"No," I said.

The dog took out a second pad, jotting down notes. "I see."

"Look. I'm trying to find someone, and I thought that maybe since you're _detectives_, you might be able to help me." I almost said "call me crazy," but I decided that would only aggravate the situation.

The dog frowned at me. "You wouldn't be trying to find someone _to have sex with_, would you?"

Before I could respond, Max said, "Noids do not have sex with doodles."

"It's the oldest law in Cool World," said Sam.

"Uh...does that mean what I think it does?"

"What, that flesh and blood human beings can't copulate with cartoon characters?" Max gave me a nervous laugh. "Whoever gave you _that_ idea?"

"Look," I said, suddenly feeling uncomfortable. "I'm actually looking for another..._noid_. I just want to know if she came through here and where she is now."

The two let out a collective sigh of relief.

"Haven't seen her," said Max. "Do you have any pictures?"

I shook my head. "But she should be really easy to find. She's presumably the only other real person here, and she's wearing animated lingerie."

The dog jotted down some notes. "_I see._"

Max slapped him in the face. "Go back to detective mode!" he hissed.

"I thought you said we were in the wrong business-"

Max covered his mouth, addressing me. "We still haven't received payment for our services."

I sighed, thinking that they really didn't deserve any payment at this point. "Don't you ask for that _after_ you do the job?"

"It's a _retainer fee_. You pay the rest of it _after_."

"I _have_ currency, but you don't-"

"I'm sorry, sir. We cannot legally accept noid currency."

I frowned, thinking about the stack of daffy duck money in the hotel. "Never mind. I'll...try to find her myself."

I knew the dog probably would work _pro bono_ if I found the right angle of persuasion, but I didn't know where to start.

"Will this help?"

I looked down and saw Sneezer handing me a stack of unnaturally bright green dollar bills.

"How...?" I stammered. And then, "Cartoon. Never mind. I don't care. Thank you, yes, that money will help."

"No Sneezers allowed!" Max yelled.

"Wait, Max!" Sam cried. "He has money!"

Max snatched the stack out of the mouse's paws, thumbing through it, counting the dollars.

"Excellent. Fifty smackers!"

A hand shot out of the little circle in the center of the bill and slapped him repeatedly.

"Moolah!" he kissed the bills. "You are so beautiful! I love you!" He kissed it some more.

I just sighed. "The woman. Can you help me or not?"

"All right," Max said. "First order of business. We need to set you down with our sketch artist."

"I said she's the only other human in town! You don't need a sketch artist!"

Sam muttered something to Max.

"What's that?" I said, suspicious.

"Nothing! Nothing!" Max said with a sheepish grin.

"Is there...something you're not telling me?"

"No," said Max.

"Yes," Sam said, but then changed it to "No" when Max elbowed him.

"Are there...other `noids' in town?"

"Um..._maybe_?"

"Like who?"

"You wouldn't know him," Max blurted.

"So he's a _guy_. Surely that narrows it down."

The two seemed relieved that I took their statement at face value.

"This other noid," I said. "Is he Professor Heinreich Bubelstein?"

They stared at me, then each other, then said yes in such a way that made me think they were lying.

The dog was still poised with a pencil and pad.

"Fine," I said. "She's white, curly haired. Blonde...and she's wearing cartoon underwear. Blue. Said it used to belong to Holli Would."

"Holli Would!" the detectives cried in unison.

"Yeah," I said. "Does that name mean anything to you?"

I paused. "Okay, I guess she must _exist_ here, right?"

"Are you _sure_ you're not trying to break the oldest rule in Cool World?" Sam asked.

I shook my head. "I stopped lusting after cartoon characters when I turned twelve."

The sighed in relief.

"Look. I don't know anything about this Holli except she was associated with my dad in some way, and she's in all the Cool World comic books."

The dog stared at the rabbit. "Dad?"

"I'm Drew Deebes," I said.

They gasped in shock.

"Another Deebes!" The rabbit was so mortified that it came out in a stutter.

"Y-you shouldn't be here," said Sam. "You really shouldn't."

"Why?" I asked. "What did my dad do?"

"Uh, how about breaking Cool World's oldest law?"

"Gross," I muttered. "You're telling me about my dad's sex life."

"It gets worse," said the rabbit. "He unleashed the entire doodle world upon an unsuspecting human populace."

I swallowed hard. "That shit was real? The thing about me being a mouse scaring my elephant mother? That was real?"

"Um...maybe?"

The rabbit was now sitting low in his desk, looking very suspicious.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

Sheepish grin. "Nothing! Just..._trying to work out a kink in my neck_!"

"Yeah," the dog reassured me. "Just some..._back exercises_. There's really nothing under that desk that would concern you. There certainly isn't any _silent alarm that summons the Cool World Police Department_! He's just stretching his back!"

"You're calling the cops," I said, not believing what I was hearing.

"Uh...maybe?"

Sneezer tugged on my pant leg. "C'mon, Drew. Let's go."

I quickly marched to the door.

I pushed it open, then froze. "Wait. What about the money I gave you?"

"_Thanks!_" Max said. "_We'll put it to good use!_"

I smacked my head. "Never mind! God, this place is _so_ aggravating!"

The moment I stepped out on the sidewalk and marched a few steps up the street, I was tackled to the brickwork framing a vegetarian poodle clipping service.

I stared up at my assailant, a broad shouldered figure in a blue suit with blank circles for eyes and a stylish brown bouffant.

"Where do you think you're going, shithead?"

I raised my hands defensively. "Officer, I don't want any trouble."

"Shut up," he barked. "Sargent Harris. Cool World PD. No noids allowed. It's the law."

"I'm getting a noid right now," I deadpanned.

I received a punch to the face for my troubles.

The funny thing is, I didn't get birdies. A bunch of dollar signs circled _my_ head.

"Look. I didn't see a sign back in that old dusty hotel room or I probably wouldn't have come."

"Well you can just go back to that old dusty hotel room, `cause you're not welcome here."

"I'd be happy to oblige, but the door is gone. I'm stuck."

"Well, find a way to get unstuck, or you're going to be spending some quality time in jail."

"Did you give my girlfriend this much grief when she came here?"

"What girlfriend?"

"Blonde. Non-animated. Wearing cartoon lingerie."

"Haven't seen her."

"Look. Harris. Can you cut me a break? Let me grab my girlfriend and show me out the door? You find me a door and I won't walk, I'll _run_ away from this place. I promise."

"What's her name?"

"Jessica."

"Last name?"

"I don't know, but it's not Rabbit. She's not a cartoon, and she's crazy. Should stick out like a sore thumb, right?"

"Speaking of names, I never caught yours."

"Didn't you get that information from the silent alarm? I'm Drew. Drew Deebes."

"Damn! I knew you looked familiar!"

He pulled my arms behind my back, clamping something on my wrists. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw that they were literal _hand_cuffs, a pair of rough looking five fingered hands that gripped my wrists like regular metal ones.

"Oh. That's _real_ cute. They actually look like _hands_."

"I'm not laughing."

"Neither am I," I sighed. "Look. Whatever beef you have against my dad, leave me out of it. The asshole was absent from my childhood and most my adult life. Whatever you think I am, you're wrong. I am nothing like him."

"I'd like to agree with you, but I'm more of a nature rather than nurture type of guy."

"Would it help to tell you that I can't draw anything more complicated than a stick figure?"

He frowned. "Bullshit."

"I'm an accountant. But think what you want. You want to throw me in jail, fine, whatever. But if you find my girlfriend, throw her in with me. She's the nut that actually figured out how to get us here."

"I'll do that." But the look on his cartoon face said he wouldn't.

"Oh, and if you see my dad anywhere, punch him for me."

Harris raised an eyebrow. "You know, I'm starting to like you."

"Enough to change your mind about the jail?"

"Not...that much. Not yet. Play your cards right, and maybe I'll think about it."

I was led to a cardboard cutout of a police car. It was to scale, but it puzzled me to no end.

"What is this?" I said. "Some kind of gag?"

"If you don't shut up, I'll gag _you_."

He touched a key to the lock, and the two dimensional representation of a vehicle turned into a brightly colored Crown Vic with flashing lights on the top.

He threw open the back door. "Get in."

I obeyed.

Standard cop car, except it was all paint. Even the fence between the front and back was paint. Very...strong paint, as I discovered when I tested it.

Harris started up the car, pulling out from the curb. "How well do you know your father?"

"I don't," I said. "He was in jail for manslaughter, there was a divorce, and then, after...whatever it was with all the cartoon elephants running around Vegas...I haven't seen or heard from him since."

"God," Harris sighed. "And I thought he was an asshole before."

"You seem...unusually...level headed for a cartoon cop."

Harris laughed. "Flattery will get you nowhere, my friend."

I glanced out the window. Like any cartoon vehicle, the scenery was on an endless loop of identical looking buildings and shrubs.

"I'm serious," I said. "This place is driving me nuts with all its stupid corny jokes. You're the only one I can actually hold a real conversation with."

"That's because I used to be human," he said.

I stared at him in disbelief. "How is that?"

"Your dad's doodle bitch pushed me off the roof of the Union Plaza hotel."

"So why are you a cartoon? Shouldn't you be dead?"

"If a doodle kills you, you become a doodle."

"Wait," I said. "I was just _in_ that hotel. My girlfriend kept rambling about a spike of power. Something some German professor came up with back in the forties or something."

He slammed on the brakes, pressing his face against the fence. "Where's the spike now!"

I shrugged. "I don't know. We only found a secret room. That's how we got here. Well, that and my girlfriend's animated underwear."

He turned back around. "You better pray to God that nobody finds that spike."

He took his foot off the brake.

"Tell me something," the cop said. "If you hate your old man so much, why did you keep his last name?"

"Laziness," I said. "Changing your name is too much work. Plus I never liked the name Odum."

"And Dweebs is fine," he muttered.

"It's better than Odum. That's all I'm saying." I shook my head, poking my foot at the painted floorboards. "Do you know what happened to my dad?"

There was a pregnant pause before he answered.

"Not a clue."

And then, after a longer pause, "If I were you, I'd forget him."

I silently stared at the back of his head. The lack of detail made it not worth staring at.

"I think you know something, Officer Harris."

"And _I think_ you should forget about it."

"But-"

"I said forget it!" he snapped.

"All right!" I grumbled. "Shit, never mind!"

"You seem like a good kid," he said. "That asshole will take you down the wrong path. Honestly, you're _lucky_ not to know him. The man never knew when to keep his johnson in his pants."

"Are you saying I should call you dad?"

"Hell no." He sighed. "What I'm saying is that you should be your own man. Let sleeping dogs lie. That's all I'm saying."

"Is he here? I imagine he _must be_ if you're warning me about him like-"

"I'm not going to tell you again. Forget about him!"

"Fine."

I gave up.

The vehicle pulled up along the curb of a police station, and we got out.

The station was a tall glass and concrete edifice, occupied by an illogical combination of characters. Disney's Bonkers, a quasi-bobcat-ish thing in blue marched past us as we stepped through the door.

And then we were marching in between the cast of _Future Cops_, the Native American Marshall Bravestarr, a London bobby, and the cop that advertises Cookie Crisp.

Being non-animated, I got stared at, by everyone from Inch High Private Eye to Dick Tracy and a generic _Scooby Doo_ cop.

A lot of staring.

Bonker's female partner was so distracted that she accidentally bumped into me, spilling papers all over the floor.

Everyone was whispering behind my back, literally. The sound effect guy from _Police Academy_ as making weird noises.

We approached the check-in desk, manned by a purple hippopotamus in uniform.

A second later, I was smacked in the head with a book.

"This is so stupid," I muttered.

A cigar smoking spider with a bowler waddled up to Sargent Harris, muttering something to him.

A few moments later, I was in a steel gray elevator, accompanied by Harris, his spider friend, the Chinese stereotype Kung Fu guy from _Dick Tracy_, and...the trenchcoat wearing cartoon cat from _Last Action Hero_.

I glanced at the spider, peering at his vest and his black abdomen. Knowing something about the various breeds, I said, "Say, are you a house spider, or a mouse spider?"

"Neither! It shouted angrily. I'm a cop!"

"Oh great," I groaned. "He made it funny."

This group led me through a cheesy looking jail. Unrealistically wide bars, prisoners in horizontal stripes playing harmonica, standard ball and chain.

One of the harmonica players was a bony bearded man with a leg so thin that he could easily slip it through his leg shackle if he wanted to.

Lots of familiar faces. Inspector Clouseau, the Hamburglar, Wiley Coyote, Ren and Stimpi, the dimwitted muscle guy and bulldog character who always show up in these kinds of stories.

I was not taken to one of these cells.

Instead, I was taken to `maximum security.'

As we neared the end of the cell block, a cartoon Jeffrey Dahmer rubbed his stomach and moaned, "I can't believe I ate the whole thing."

Harris led me to an `isolation' cell a few rows down from there, basically a big steel box, with a tiny barred window to allow for light, and a slot for food. No toilet, of course. People in cartoons seldom urinate, hardly ever shit.

Harris gave me a forceful shove, sending me sprawling on the metal floor.

"Did you notice that I didn't disagree when you called my dad an asshole?"

The cop laughed. "You know, I think I _do_ like you."

My handcuffs let go of my wrists and hurried back to the cop like Thing from the Addams Family.

"So you'll let me go?"

He snorted. "Maybe in a few years."

He slammed the door shut with a resounding clang.

"You're both assholes," I muttered.

"I heard that!" came the muffled reply.

Then there was only silence.


	8. Chapter 8: Pizza Time

The best thing about my prison cell was the peace and quiet. I guess, since it was maximum security or something, it had soundproofing. No screams, explosions, or insipid faux classical music.

Just me and my thoughts.

Sometimes my thoughts really annoyed me.

I kept thinking about Jessica, and how close we came to actually doing it.

Then I'd remember our age difference and become glad that we did not.

Sort of.

And then I thought that maybe going back to the real world wouldn't be so bad. I'd just cooperate with the hotel manager, take out a loan, and let my credit take a hit. A peaceful resolution without any jail time. I could even settle out of court.

I never did look into any sort of claims adjusting.

Then I contemplated the oldest law in Cool World. What if I _did_ find a suitably attractive cartoon character...?

Somewhere along the line, I dozed off.

I awoke to the sound of knocking.

When I looked up, I could see a brightly colored face of a bunny rabbit peering at me from the bars at the bottom of the door. Its eyes had long lashes, indicating that it was a child.

"Psst!" it hissed.

And then I see a brightly colored stub of a pencil rolling across the floor.

"Thanks, kid," I groaned. "Now I have something to tally the years with."

The rabbit smacked its face. "Aren't you a Deebes?"

"Yeah?" I said. "So what?"

"Then D.R.A.W.," it hissed.

"I can't even draw a stick figure. What do you want from me?"

The rabbit clenched its teeth, growling in annoyance. "God! Never mind! Maybe if you stay in there a few years, you'll grow a brain! (God, what a shithead!)"

The rabbit disappeared, leaving me with the pencil.

Out of boredom, I scratched a line on the floor.

To my surprise, I saw it glow and wiggle as I..._doodled_.

I created a hole in the floor completely by accident. I only wanted to make a generic shape to see what the pencil did, and voila, happy accident.

I looked down and saw a darkened room with a table. It looked unoccupied, and the distance didn't seem to be that great, so I immediately hopped through the opening...

...and found myself landing on a pizza in the Ninja Turtles' den.

You see, all four of the green karate dudes were having lunch with their bathrobe clad rat sensei, and I sort of squished a deep dish..._whatever_ with my body as I fell on my back.

Seriously, those guys have more bizarre tastes than most pregnant women.

I was in a brick sewer tunnel, the larger type that only exists in New York and other megacities, surrounded by identical looking turtles differentiated only by the color of their mask/headband.

"Majorly uncool!" said the one in yellow. Mike, as I recalled.

"No kidding," said the one in purple. "I was looking forward to that pickle jellybean sauerkraut and liverwurst supreme." I believe that one was Donatello, judging by the nerdy voice.

"I say we kick his ass!" said the one in red. Hot tempered, probably Raphael.

Or did I get them all mixed up? Never before did the information have any personal relevance to me, so I was probably going to fail this negotiation.

"I second that motion!" yelled Mike. "Do I have a third?"

I looked hopefully at the blue one. Being a serious leader type, I thought maybe he would give me the benefit of the doubt. I probably should have run, but they were _ninjas_. "What do you think, sensei?" he said to the rat.

After a dramatic pause, Mr. Hamato Yoshi delivered his verdict in his trademark old Kung Fu guy voice. "His ass..._deserves kicking._"

The turtles cheered.

"I'm first!" the mutant in purple hollered. "I called it!"

"No fair!" Mike cried.

"You can kick his ass after me."

Before I could adequately prepare myself, he swung his bo staff like a baseball bat, knocking me down a sewer tunnel into surprisingly clean painted water.

I drew a circle on a brick wall and found myself looking in a shower.

Beneath the running spray, I could see the naked body of April O'Neal, girlfriend of one of the turtles.

She screamed, and a moment later, Leonardo was slashing my pants, leaving me in my boxers.

The one in yellow punched me in the face, and I fell backwards in the `sewage,' unconscious.


	9. Chapter 9: Fat Cat

I awoke to a white hand slapping my face, and the sound of police sirens.

The Ninja Turtles had left me in an alleyway close to a busy street corner.

"Wake up, you stupid beefcake!" a high pitched voice was shouting.

My face got slapped again.

I groaned and sat up.

As I did so, I suddenly noticed that my arms and legs had been tied together, my whole body cocooned in rope.

"Beefcake?" I asked.

The mouse shrugged. "It was the only thing I could think of that didn't sound weird."

I rolled my eyes. "Never mind. Could you get me out of this stuff?"

The mouse pulled a switchblade out of his diaper, sawing the ropes. "So you're really Jack Deebes's son."

"I thought you would have figured that out from my driver's license."

"I just thought it was a coincidence," the mouse said.

"How oddly un-cartoony of you."

He poked my face. "You don't exactly look like him."

"I take after my mother," I said. "Could you finish these ropes before I get arrested?"

He cut the rest of them, and I dove behind a dumpster a second before the headlights of a cop car shined in the alley.

The beams from the headlights were opaque. It reminded me of scenes from the serious Batman cartoon.

"We need to keep going," said the mouse.

"Yeah?" I said. "Like where?"

He pointed to a garbage dump beyond the opposite end of the alley.

I frowned. "By the time we get there, we'll be in their line of sight."

I checked my shirt pocket and found the pencil was still there.

I sketched a small hole in the brick wall nearby, and saw the conveyor belts and machinery of a cheese factory.

I hurried through the hole, hiding behind a molding machine just seconds before one of those spotty orange-yellow dinosaurs from all those Kraft commercials came by in a hard hat and lab coat, inspecting samples.

Sneezer hopped through the hole, then rolled it up and stuck it in his diaper once he stood on the other side.

"So," I said. "What now?"

The mouse's pupils had been replaced by cheese wedges, his mouth hanging open as he drooled.

I waved my hand in front of his face, but he was gone.

Good riddance, I thought, sneaking down the line of machinery to a giant vat of cheese.

Above the vat, I could see a tiny green bug, a female mouse in a jumpsuit, and Watson from a Great Mouse Detective tied up and dangling by a rope. A big Persian cat in a pinstriped suit and a pair of weasels stood on top of a nearby machine, laughing wickedly at their plight.

"You'll never get away with this!" the girl mouse cried. "The Rescue Rangers will rescue me!"

"Oh, I fully expect a rescue attempt," the cat said. "They will make an interesting sort of..._fondue_."

Fat cat frowned when he saw me. "And who are you?"

"Uh...a repairman," I lied. "Uh, if I find any _contaminants_ shaped like a little guy in a jacket and a bucktoothed squirrel with a red Hawaiian shirt, I'll be sure to bring them to you."

The cat rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "If you bring me those..._squirrels_, as you say, you might find yourself in a _very lucrative partnership_."

"I'll let you know," I said. "P.S. _I saw no criminal activity here_."

Fatcat smirked. "Good! I was thinking about _how it would be a shame to kill you_."

If you care for explanations:

1\. I thought Fatcat deserved to win at least once.

2\. The Rescue Rangers would likely turn me in, whereas a crook would not, without self incriminating.

And...

3\. I hoped to use another bad guy's criminal operation as smoke screen.

I hustled closer to the rear of the factory, ducking behind a towering stack of cardboard boxes, apparently cheese.

A garage door slid open, and a suspicious looking black truck rolled in, manned by ski cap wearing muscular hoodlums from Inspector Gadget. The words `Definitely Cheese' were painted on the side of the vehicle.

I looked at the black and red uniforms and thought they might as well write `bad guy' on their foreheads.

I squeezed past the truck, pressing my back against the building's rear wall.

Ahead of me, I saw cheese trucks, stacks of palettes, discarded machinery, and a road leading to the dump.

Almost there.

I looked from the left to the right, hoping I hadn't been followed.

I suddenly noticed Sneezer standing right next to me, eating a piece of cheese. "Whatcha doin'?"

I clutched my chest. "Don't do that!"

"Do what?" he said innocently.

"Never mind. Let's get out of here before the cops find us."

The mouse froze, looking around.

"What. Now."

The moment I said this, we were surrounded on all sides by cops.

The entire cast of _Police Academy_ and _Future Cops_, the police from _Batman_ and _Ninja Turtles_ and _Spider Man_, and that fat security guard guy from _Animaniacs_.

They even had classic Batman and a search helicopter with Chief Wiggum in it.

"Shit."

"Freeze, dirt bag!" yelled a voice on a bullhorn. It was that chick from Police Academy. The one with the high pitched annoying voice. The whine of electrical feedback didn't make her sound any better.

As fast as I could, I rushed back into the factory, hiding behind a wall.

I suddenly noticed the cat glaring up at me. "Is this your doing?" he growled over the sirens.

"No way," I said. "They only want _me_. Just act natural and-"

A second later, a thug was dragging me out the door, to throw me to the cops.


	10. Chapter 10: Holli Would

Doctor Claw's goon did a couple practice throws, then tossed me across the parking lot.

Somehow, I ended up falling down a hole in the pavement, into another sewer.

I looked up and saw a white figure staring into a hole. "_Oops!_" it said. "_I'd better pick this up before someone gets hurt!_"

The hole disappeared.

I ducked down a sewer tunnel just a few moments before the green ninjas came skating through, making all kinds of noise.

For a long time, I just wandered through the labyrinth of tunnels, following the right wall to see where it went.

At least by hiding in there, I could avoid the heat. To the best of my knowledge, there weren't any cartoons about grabbing an escaped convict in a sewer tunnel. I figured if they made _The Fugitive_ or Stephen King's _Golden Years_ into a cartoon, it could happen, but I really hoped it wouldn't be anytime soon.

I stumbled across an alligator, but it seemed friendly.

"Hullo!" it said. "Would you like some tea?"

I stared at it for a moment, then said, "Sure."

And so I waded into a half submerged sort of living room, with a little table, a refrigerator and an LCD plasma TV.

I stared at the screen as the creature put the kettle on.

Soccer.

"I have a free cable hookup," it said. "Nice, huh?"

"It's...okay," I said.

The alligator gave me tea and some kind of scone thing. The tea kind of tasted like Earl Gray and the `biscuit'...kind of tasted like paper, but I said it was tasty anyway.

The soccer appeared to be live, featuring real human beings, which is weird because you'd think it would be cartoon soccer against Acme Looniversity or something.

Of course, cartoons can't have pop culture references without access to the reference.

In my little chair, I ate my paper scone and drank tea while watching Brazil scoring points.

"Do you know how to get to the surface?" I asked. "Maybe to the junk yard?"

"I know of a few," it said. "There's even one in my bedroom closet."

"Oh...kay," I said.

I waded after the gator as it swam into a brick sewer tunnel/bedroom with a purple queen bed with a mirror on the ceiling. The gator had little dressers and a table with a laptop on it at the foot of the bed.

The situation made me a little uncomfortable, even more so as it batted its eyelashes at me and posed provocatively on the bed.

I hurried up to the closet, peering inside.

My host basically wore a lot of belts and not much else, it seemed. At the rear, I could see a maintenance ladder with a manhole above.

"Before you go," said the gator. "I need to give you something."

I swallowed. "Such as?"

It grabbed my face, giving me a sloppy French kiss.

That sounds disgusting, but it was animated, so I figured things could have been worse. Say, for example, if I had been Frenched by a real German Shepherd. Now _that_ would be gross.

The manhole led to the trunk of a busted up Chevy. I pushed open the lid, and found myself staring out at a mountain of trash and scrap metal.

I quickly hopped out, searching the junk piles for signs of police.

I hadn't gone a step when I heard a low growl behind me.

I spun around and saw a brown dog with black ears and a blue skull and crossbones hat frowning at me.

"Buddy, you're _trespassing _on_ private property_," it said. "_You don't want to know_ what I do to trespassers!"

I remembered what the dog was called, and what he was about. He wasn't a static villain, he had a love life (I think), and a couple times his enemy cats tried to help him out with things, like keeping his job.

"Uh, hey, _Leroy_," I said. "Um, I'm not exactly _trespassing_, per se. I'm actually looking for a catalytic converter for a `72 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. There's no law against _shopping_, is there?"

The dog looked flustered. "N-no. I guess not. Can't say I've heard of what you're looking for, but you can probably find anything in this pile of junk if you look hard enough."

Feeling a bit bold, I added, "Oh, when I was walking past the dump the other day, I noticed a red and white Cadillac that turns into a house and a boat. I'd like to buy it. Can you show me where it's been moved to?"

"Uh...you don't want that," the dog said nervously. "It's full of pests."

"Really? What a shame. I'm embarrassed to say this, but it's actually what I came here to buy. The converter is just a little extra piece for one of my other cars."

The dog grumbled something indistinct, and I was led to the appropriate junk mound, the one with the trailer with the chute that drops down into a bath tub.

"Thanks," I said. "I think I can figure it out from here."

"I hope so," Leroy said. "Good luck on emptying that thing out."

He stomped off.

Immediately the tenants came out, a short orange cat with a scarf and a pumpkin shaped hat, a white cat with headphones and roller skates, a skinny brown cat with a headband, and a fat gray one with crossed eyes and a little hat.

I pointed to each of them in turn. "Riffraff, Wordsworth, Hector, Mungo...where's Cleo?"

"Working at the Halftone Club," her boyfriend said. "If that's any of your concern."

The brown one scowled at me. "The more important question is, who are you?"

"It's really bizarre," said the white one. "That he knows who we are!"

"Drew Deebes," I said.

They backed away a little.

"Drew Deebes!" they all cried.

The white one pointed at me. "The son of the clown, that tore Cool World down!"

Mungo muttered something to Hector, who muttered in Riffraff's ear.

The lead cat sighed and shook his head. "C'mon. Holli wants to talk to you."

"Holli?" I said. "As in Holli Would?"

He nodded. "Who else?"

"There goes the neighborhood," said Hector.

"What's this about?" I said.

"I don't know, and I'm not sure I want to, either."

"If she wants to sleep with me, she can forget it," I said. "There's nothing more disgusting than sleeping with your dad's girlfriend."

They seemed somewhat relieved to hear me saying this, but I guess they weren't sure if I were telling the truth.

"At any rate," said Riffraff. "I was instructed to bring you to her."

"Wait. How could she even know that I'd be here?"

"I'm not sure," he said. "But she had a source."

I shook my head. "Cartoons."

"C'mon," Riffraff repeated. "The sooner this is over, the better."

"What do you mean? As soon as _what_ is over?"

The cat poked me in the stomach. "You. I can't wait to get rid of you, and rid myself of this whole sorry business!"

I laughed nervously. "So, what. You're going to rub me out?"

Riffraff rolled his eyes. "I wish!"

"We made a deal with _certain individuals_," said Hector. "As soon as we dump you off at Holli's place, we won't have to deal with your ugly face again."

"Just because my dad is Jack Deebes, you automatically think I'm scum."

They all nodded.

Okay, so maybe Mungo didn't, but he's a little slow.

"I'm not my dad," I said. "I don't intend to be like my dad. So whatever you're thinking, it's wrong."

"Duh, I was thinking you're an okay guy!" said Mungo. "But if you say it's wrong, it's wrong!"

I groaned. "Whatever. Look. I used to watch you on TV all the time when I was a kid. I used to love you guys." I shook my head, looking into the black dots that served as Riffraff's pupils. "You especially. I loved how you tried so hard to make Cleo happy, and how you always got the gang together to pull of some crazy half baked plan to get food, or something..."

"If you like us so much," Riffraff said. "Do us a favor and follow the rule: Look, but don't touch."

"No touching," I said. "I swear."

I followed him down the mountain of junk to the car.

It has been a boyhood fantasy of mine to ride in the felines' fancy Cadillac. I always wondered why the thing never drove anywhere, but I guess the vehicle probably didn't exit the junkyard because it would technically be theft. Of course, I never actually saw the property owner on the show...

Come to think of it, the creators of the show were always a bit vague about the type of dump the cats inhabited. Was it a trash dump, or was it a scrap yard? As a trash dump, it contained far too many automobiles and old tires to be practical for disposing a million tons of household waste. As a scrap yard, it sure had a lot of banana peels, broken lamps and other random debris.

Did I pull a fast one on the dog? Or did I merely surprise him with possibly the only legal business deal his company ever saw?

When we passed Leroy, he looked upset, growling at us, but I sat up in the back seat and said, "Chill! We're going to the loan office."

That shut him up.

Honestly, if there _was_ a loan office not manned by a wolf and two sharks, I would have gone there in a second, _and _gotten a cartoon job to pay for it, just to get that car...even if the cats were part of the package.

If worst came to worst, I might even try to forge cartoon money with that pencil.

The view from a cartoon convertible is similar to the interior of a cartoon cop car, except it's wider in scope. Repetitive, but prettier, and it occasionally changed angles with the turn of the steering wheel.

For a moment, I pondered their auto insurance. The point was moot, as they didn't actually own the car, but I suspected they had their choice of a General, Erin Esurance, Snoopy or a Gecko, as the guy from Oz and that guy with the rumbly bass voice didn't yet have a cartoon.

Riffraff turned on the car stereo, and we drove through scenery to the hardcore sound of Xzibit. To my annoyance, the cats were rapping along with some of the songs.

The neighborhoods turned into tall, bizarrely twisted gray buildings as we traveled over large hills that rose and dipped like waves.

As I stared at the scenery, my first thought was, `I didn't know Dr. Seuss was an architect.' Then, `There's no way that building should be standing.'

At the top of one wave-like hill, we came to an enormous gate that looked like a set of teeth.

I shrank in my seat, preparing for a collision, but at the last moment, the teeth opened, and we were rolling through another stretch of gray buildings.

The Cadillac stopped in front of an intimidating office building with stone lions framing the front staircase. Far above, I could see a green pyramid crowning the twisted structure. Across the street, I saw a cylindrical rod-like building, with a puck shaped structure near the top, reminding me vaguely of the Seattle Space Needle. Behind it stood other gray buildings, one of them resembling the London postal tower.

I stared at my surroundings in confusion. "Why are we stopping?"

"Out," said Riffraff.

Surprised, and somewhat outraged, I cried, "What?"

"You get out here," Hector growled.

"But how do I find Holli?"

"Keep walking. You'll see a high rise with an eye on it, and duck sculptures out front. Can't miss it."

Frustrated, and feeling somewhat hurt, I climbed out of the car, and Riffraff did an illegal U-turn, speeding off in the opposite direction, leaving me in a cartoon cloud of exhaust.

I stumbled up the block, staring at the rows of immense high rise apartments. The charcoal colored buildings looked melted and oddly bent. When I neared one, I often feared it would collapse on me, but then it _was_ a drawing, more or less.

After walking for several minutes, I found what I was looking for. A dark building with an eye on the door, the front staircase flanked by big sculptures of mallard ducks.

I climbed the stairs and knocked on the door.

A strange looking cartoon butler answered. His face was like a human owl, a long pale face, wide iris and pupil-less eyes ringed with dark circles, and a long skinny beak of a nose. His hair was dark and matted down like Frankenstein.

The man towered over me by about a foot, and he wore a tuxedo that appeared to be made out of leather. He also wore a dog collar and had a whip wrapped around one arm, one fist clenched around a riding crop.

"Mmmyess?" the man said.

I frowned when I noticed the codpiece. "I'm looking for Holli Would," I said. "They told me to look here."

"Then _they_ were wrong," the man said stuffily. "You're in the wrong state. Hollywood is _that way_." And he pointed down the road.

The door slammed shut before I could say another word.

I knocked again.

This time, the man was dressed in a French maid's outfit. "Mmmyess?"

I could see glimpses of the building's interior behind the man, a sort of mansion-like foyer with a twin staircase, dark red carpeting, a chandelier and a marble statue in the center.

"Holli Would is a _person_," I told the man. "I was told to look in the house with the ducks outside the door."

"You were told wrong. This is the wrong house."

The door slammed shut once more.

I knocked, and the butler answered the door in a shaggy dog costume, featuring a collar and codpiece.

"Mmmyess?"

I sighed. "Can you tell me where the _person_ named Holli Would resides?"

Owl Butler scowled at me. "No."

Again with the door slamming.

I sat down on the steps, staring at the rows of irregularly shaped high rise buildings.

No clue.

Hearing a hinge creaking behind me, I looked back at the door.

Instead of seeing the butler, I saw a peculiar sort of villainess type character.

She looked like something Geiger would have made, had he been asked to design a sorceress for He-Man.

She was pale, and a bony plate extended from the top and sides of her skull like the monster in all those _Aliens_ movies. Her face was the standard idealized arrangement of brush strokes and pen lines, comic book illustrator formula. The body was likewise idealized, an hourglass figure encased in an exoskeleton bikini. A black cape hung from her angular shoulder plates, rippling from time to time as a spiky tail disturbed the material.

"I hear you're looking for Holli," she purred as she seated herself next to me. "I'll show you a map."

I glanced up at the door, where the butler now stood in a gimp suit. "Uh...that's okay. Really. I'll...figure it out on my own."

"Are you sure?" she insisted.

"Well..."

As I followed her into the building, the butler unzipped his mask and said, "Mmmyess?"

I expected her to lead me to Skeletor's dungeon, but instead I was led into a very ordinary looking sitting room.

Well, as ordinary as things got in toon town. The eyes on the fancy paintings moved every once and awhile, the deer head over the fireplace had a ball gag in its mouth that it occasionally chewed, there was a disco ball, and all the bookcases were paintings, but it wasn't that weird looking otherwise. Leather sofas, loveseat, ottoman. Glass coffee table full of animated fish, bear skin rug...

Okay, still kind of weird, but not _weird weird_.

The stranger opened a sarcophagus in the corner, revealing Mum Rah from the Thundercats. The blue mummified monster grumbled something about Candy Crush as the woman yanked a cel phone from its grip and shut the lid.

Like all cartoon objects, the phone could easily be stretched to a larger size, maybe even the size of a mast on a sailing ship if you had reason to. She stretched it to the size of a computer monitor, bringing up a map.

"What's her address?"

I frowned. "I don't know. They just told me to look for a house with an eye and a pair of ducks in front of it."

"Swans," the lady said, reaching behind her head plate. "Oh, and where are my manners?"

She thrust her tail at me. "Miss Terious."

I shook the tail. I was just going along for the ride at this point. "Drew."

I paused. My last name was getting me into all kinds of trouble. "Drew _Odum_."

"Nice to meet you." She smiled, removing a large pink spider thing from the back of her skull.

When she set the thing on the floor, I could see it was one of those type of things comic book artists draw when they're trying hard not to copy the facehugger from aliens. The thing had eyes and a large set of teeth, its ridged body closely resembling the earwig maker from the _Wrath of Khan_.

"What's that?" I said.

"It's a tracker," she replied, picking up a bull whip. "She'll show you to Holli's house."

She stretched the whip in her hands. "As you can see, I'm a little _busy_."

"Oh...kay?"

And so I followed the ugly creature out the door.

The butler now wore a diaper and had a ball gag in his mouth, mumbling out a muffled "Mmmyess" as I passed.

The `Phace Hugger' led me up a hill for a few blocks, and then I saw it.

It was a creepy sort of high rise. The swan ornaments out front looked downright demonic. They even had lights inside them.

I had to look up to the twentieth or thirtieth story to see the eye they were talking about, but it seemed I was in the right place.

Directly opposite the building, I saw the ramshackle farmhouse from _Courage the Cowardly Dog_, complete with elderly curmudgeons in rocking chairs and their sleeping pet.

A little boy, Bobby from _Bobby's World_, pedaled past the house on a big wheel, dragging a stretchy rubber spider toy behind him.

My unsightly guide waved goodbye with its finger legs, waddling off down the hill.

I approached the door, staring at the creepy mutant skull shaped door knocker painted on its flat surface.

Not quite sure what to do, I knocked _on_ the knocker.

A _drawing_ popped out of the painted wood, a sort of endlessly free flowing sketch of a deformed skull door knocker, looking all mean and evil as it chewed its ring and glared at me.

"What do you want?" it said in a creepy distorted voice.

"Is this where Holli Would lives?"

"Who wants to know?" it asked.

"Me. Drew _Deebes_."

The knocker squinted at me for a moment, then growled "Suite 2017" and something unintelligible, turning back into a drawing on the door.

The door slid open on its own accord.

The moment I stepped through the door, I bumped into the stomach of a big purple gorilla with a human-like face, orange eyebrows, and orange pants.

"Uh, sorry," I blurted.

"You don't look like him," it growled.

"Who?" I said, dreading where this was going.

"The Deebes kid. Heard a noid was coming this way, and his name was Deebes. Guess that's you."

I shrugged. "Maybe I am a Deebes. What of it?"

The creature just snickered and stepped aside.

His companion, a deformed blue smurf with no hat, rambled incoherently as I passed him.

I nearly stepped on my next obstacle, some kind of bald mutant in a diaper, with biker gloves on his hands. Its face made me think of a convict from jail for some reason.

"Excuse me," I said to it.

The creature got on its hands, offering me one of its feet to shake.

When I attempted to do so, the creature poked me in the eye with its other foot.

"He's a Deebes, all right."

"Oooh," a female voice moaned. "Let me get a second opinion."

A pair of purple gloves yanked my boxers down. Incredibly embarrassed, I quickly pulled them back up, then spun around to see who did it.

The culprit was a light brown midget with huge lips and black hair that curled up in a wave. Her dress and her headband was pink, and she had no legs.

"He's _definitely_ a Deebes," she muttered.

All three laughed at me, then took out bags of popcorn, watching me wander around the lobby like I were a kind of movie.

When I stepped inside, I really didn't expect an apartment complex, as in, other people living there.

It was by far the most unusual apartment lobby I've ever been in.

Near the door were rows of mailboxes, but that wasn't the strange part. Next to the lock boxes for oversized packages, there were two additional boxes labeled `baby', and the stork from the Vlasic pickle commercials was stuffing a bundled _something_ into one of those boxes.

Great, I thought with a roll of my eyes. Now I know where babies come from.

The lobby had a lounge area, its couches occupied by Tony the Frosted Flakes tiger and a muscular big chinned guy that looked like Indiana Jones, and his pet one eyed panther, Pitfall characters, I believe.

I saw Eek the cat, stuck inside a vending machine, his purple body blocking the view of all the bogus spoof products inside, and the grumpy plumber alligator from _Sweet Pickles_ was pushing a janitor's cart out of an elevator.

I marched into an elevator next to him, staring at the buttons.

The building had roughly five hundred floors.

2017, I thought.

I pushed 20, but that proved to be wishful thinking. What I found on that floor were those twin girls with purple hair from _The Simpsons, _re-enacting a scene from _The Shining_, and that cow from really old Disney cartoons.

All the numbers were in the 200 range. I needed 2000.

When I returned to the elevator area, I nearly stepped in one shaped like a giant skull. I somehow didn't think that would be a good idea, so I got in a regular one, and suddenly found myself in the company of Droopy Dog, who I guess was serving as the elevator man.

Orange hair in a Frankenstein haircut, bags under his eyes, jowls. If I were a psychologist, I would diagnose him with psychothemia, or maybe a sleep disorder. Not my favorite animated character, but you couldn't choose them here.

He stood on a little stool, looking at me with a bored expression as he deadpanned, "What floor, sir?"

"Floor 200," I said.

He pushed a button, and it's like I'm standing in a capsule blasting off a launch pad at Cape Canaveral. The G-forces were so extreme that I fell on the floor.

"Floor 200, sir."

Seeing a line of cartoon characters waiting to trample me, I pulled myself up on a rail and staggered out.

I was in a hallway, lined with scary looking doors and tall black framed windows overlooking rows of twisting buildings.

As I wandered from door to door, checking the room numbers, I accidentally bumped into an unfamiliar _Archie's_ character with red hair and glasses, knocking her shopping bags to the floor. Stuff scattered all over the place.

"Sorry, miss," I blurted.

I helped her pick up bags, clothing items, perfume bottles and other things.

Short sleeved blue blouse. Little black skirt. High heels and stockings.

She was cute for a cartoon. I figured she would be fair competition for Betty and Veronica.

When our hands brushed each other, I saw little cartoon hearts floating out of her body.

"Thank you," she said with a nervous smile. "I...should really watch where I'm going."

She picked up more items.

"No," I said. "I was clumsy."

The girl offered a dainty hand. "Vanessa Vixx."

I shook it. "Drew Deebes."

Vanessa giggled. "_Drew._ That's cute. So. What brings you up to this floor?"

"Um, my dad's girlfriend wants to talk to her about something. I don't know." I gave her a shrug.

She picked up her bags and stood up. "You want to go out once you _have your talk,_ and I have my things put away?"

I swallowed hard. "Uh, I don't think that's a good idea."

She turned red. "I'm asking you out for _coffee_. I'm not asking you to come into my room and go to town!"

I chuckled, feeling a bit awkward. "Sorry. I'm...new to...Cool World. Coffee sounds fine."

"How about ice cream?" she said suddenly.

"Sure. Whatever you like."

Smiling, she said, "I'll be at Hoofnagel's on third street. Don't take too long."

When she turned her back to me, I suddenly noticed a stripey orange tail poking out of her rear. I wasn't too surprised. I thought the addition made her look even cuter.

"Wait," I called. "Do you know where I can find Suite 2017?"

She pointed her tail in the direction opposite to the one I'd been traveling.

"I'd take what she says _con grano salo_."

I chuckled. "I see those glasses aren't just for looks."

"Not everything here is window dressing," she said as she glanced back.

When she turned a corner, I heard her add, "I have layers. _Like an onion._"

I laughed. "You just had to make Shrek sexy," I muttered.

Realizing what I just said, I covered my mouth in horror.

"I _need_ to get out of this place!"

Apartment 2017 had an oddly shaped polygonal door painted with brown-orange tiger stripes. I knocked and it came open.

Of course, being as it looked and felt like cardboard, I probably could have _blown_ it open.

Inside, I found a vast room lined with archways, featuring a bar with a white tiger stripe pattern, a cardboard couch, a seventies style donut couch, the kind with the cylindrical backrest in the center, and a large Victrola, that, strangely enough, projected an episode of _Desperate Housewives_.

A blonde with a puffy bun hairdo and a sleeveless white dress sat cross legged on a stool, watching the program with great interest. At first she didn't even notice me enter the room.

"Uh...hi?" I ventured.

At last noticing me, she climbed off the stool, straightening her dress.

The outfit had a plunging neckline, and a wide slit running up the side, revealing her long slender legs.

"_Drew Deebes..." _She slid a hand up the slit in her dress, exposing more thigh as her palm and fingers made their way to her hip. "I've heard _so much_ about you."


	11. Chapter 11: Plot Holes

"You're hitting on me?" I cried in disgust. "When you slept with my dad? Sick!"

"Don't act so disgusted," she said, sliding her hand down to the middle of her dress, exposing more leg. "I can see where your eyes keep going."

I forced my gaze upward, into her blue eyes. "Is that why you asked me up here? To sleep with everyone in the Deebes family? Hey, once you're done doing me, I have a grandpa in Boise..."

She dropped her hand to her side and scowled at me. "Being disrespectful seems to be a family trait!"

"No offense, but I'm not a big fan of sloppy seconds."

We frowned at each other for a few moments.

"Do you know what happened to my dad? Did he die? Is he a cartoon like Harris?"

"Your father is very much alive."

"Then why I haven't I seen him? Do you know where he went?"

"He's here, Drew. He's here."

"Have you seen him lately?"

She frowned and shook her head. "Not after we split up. He's slowly been distancing himself from me the moment we came back from the incident."

"Do you know anyone named Heinreich Baubels?"

She paused and thought a moment. "It's...not ringing any bells. We _do_ have a Professor Bubbles, but I don't know where he is right now."

"Why did you ask me up here?" I asked.

"I wanted to see what Jack's son looked like. Honestly, I was impressed until you opened your mouth."

I rolled my eyes. "I still don't understand. Why was it so horrible for you and dad to sleep together? Why was there a law against it to begin with?"

She glanced at a clock on the wall. "Keep your eyes on me for the next...thirty seconds."

I sighed, doing what she asked. "Okay?"

All of a sudden, I was looking at a real woman. Her hair took on the darker straw color of real blonde hair, her bosom and hips shrinking to realistic proportions, the titanium white paint that represented her dress turning to silk.

Thirty seconds later, and she was a cartoon again.

"That's what happens when a noid and a doodle does it. At first, it happened once every couple minutes, but over the years, it's stabilized."

"I know it's not any of my business, but does it help to...sleep with him some more?"

"I really don't think so. I mean, I tried it, but I didn't notice much of a difference. I still turn real twice every hour, thirty seconds to the hour, and after the thirty mark."

"So that's all it does?" I said. "It doesn't produce a child or anything?"

She burst out laughing. "You're funny."

"I don't get it. What's so illegal about it? It only affects you, right?" Not wanting to imply that I wanted anything to do with her, I quickly added, "I mean, if my dad's girlfriend turns human once and awhile, he shouldn't go to jail over it..."

Holli shook her head. "Let me show you something."

She led me over to a corner of the room featuring a sort of shrine devoted to...The Union Plaza Hotel.

Surprised, I pointed at an old photograph of the front of the building. "Hey! That's-"

"That isn't what I want to show you," she interrupted.

Her slender hand pointed to a glowing hole floating in the air a couple inches away from the wallpaper.

It was only about the size of a half dollar, but I saw enough to startle me.

I was looking into a real living room. Faded, lumpy furniture, unflattering dingy lighting, a spider web in the corner nearest the hole, fading cracked interior paint. An emaciated gangly teen was smoking a cigarette, practicing guitar in front of a Ramones video on a flat screen TV. The video appeared to be a bootleg because it kept freezing up.

I stared in puzzlement. "What is this?"

"It's a rip in the fabric of reality," Holli said. "I think it has some connection to one of the spikes of power."

"So ...your having sex did this?"

"No," she said. "It just made it bigger. Big enough for me to get out."

"Is...that how you met him? Were you just kind of...stalking him from that hole?"

"It's not like that," she said. "We had a connection."

"Sure," I said. "Stalkers never say that."

She sighed. "Drew, have you stopped for a moment and thought about where cartoon and comic book characters originate from?"

I shrugged. "Uh...imitating other artists and using their artistic formulas, occasionally using real life models for reference?"

"That's not where they come from," she said. "That's only language."

I furrowed my brow. "I'm not following you."

"Drew, Cool World exists with or without the artist. I had an existence, a life, long before your father ever started drawing me."

I thought about it for a moment. "So...you're saying...you're all a bunch of living, breathing ideas?"

"Truly talented artists don't get ideas," she said. "The tap into Cool World."

"Does that mean Wolverine is around here somewhere?"

She shook her head. "I don't particularly care for Logan's mood swings."

I laughed. "How does that even work? I mean, Catwoman was based on Bob Kane's real ex-girlfriend..."

"That's only an ingredient, Drew. I'm talking about the moment when an artist puts a pencil to paper and churns out a graphic novel in twenty four hours because it `practically wrote itself.'"

"I thought that had to do with deadlines and energy drinks."

I could tell she was losing patience with me, but I wasn't an artist or a spiritualist. I worked for H and R Block. "You still haven't explained how you and dad met."

"Look. Cool World exists on a separate plane, a wavelength or something that sometimes overlaps your world." She touched her palms, slowly sliding them together. "When that happens, and the right artist is present at the point of contact..."

All of a sudden, her voice took on the tone of a swimsuit model explaining the effects of K-Y Jelly. "That's when special things start to happen!" She rubbed her hands together in a way that seemed to illustrate sex. "Big things. I mean major."

Her tone of voice made it sound like she were talking about erections, but she instead gushed out, "Mickey Mouse. Krazy Kat. Superman. Captain America. Casper. The Mysterious Cities of Gold."

That last one went right over my head. "What?"

"Never mind," she groaned. "The point is, that's where the big ones come from. And if the right artist just so happens to be in that spot and that spot happens to be within a hundred yards of a spike?" She made a noise like she were being pleasured sexually, continuing in breathier tones. "That's when the real magic happens! That's how I was able to cross over.

"I started little at first, reaching out of the paper, testing Jack's limits, and then I grabbed him."

She let out a moaning giggle that made me feel awkward and uncomfortable. "Oh...kay. Thanks for the explanation."

But then I glanced at the rip in the fabric of space/time again and frowned. "How do you see anything through this?"

"That's not the only hole. There's another in my bedroom."

I gave her a dirty look. "I think I'll pass on that one."

"It's not what you think," she said.

"Of course it's not."

She shook her head. "I have a device that can see into your world, but it's heavy. You'll need to come into the other room so I can show you."

I was becoming weary of these constant attempts at seduction. As cute as she was, I couldn't make myself not think about dad stripping naked and...ugh.

"All right," I groaned. "This had better not be a trick."

She led me into an adjacent room, a big dark place with wide spreading windows draped in flowing curtains, and a bed with white tiger striped coverings, some dressers, a nightstand, and little else. A bust of some generic rock and roll guy decorated the wall above the nightstand. I only mention it because I kept squinting at it, trying to figure out who it represented, and never figured it out.

She pulled a dresser aside, revealing another small hole in reality, this one looking into a messy bedroom, plastered with posters for rock bands I'd never heard of, punk rock gear, and art supplies.

A teenage girl with multiple piercings and spiky purple dyed hair sat on a bed with Ipod buds plugged in her ears, mumbling along to some song while she sketched pictures like one of those psychics who did automatic writing.

"See?" Holli whispered. "She has the connection. Her room is directly above the spike, in the same rental property your father once lived in."

She marched over to a wall, pulling the cord on what appeared to be a hide away bed, but instead of seeing a bed come down, I saw one of those Rube Goldberg-esque telescopes they sometimes used on weird cartoon shows.

The animated woman turned a few dials, pulled some levers and turned a crank, stooping to peer through the eyepiece.

Apparently not satisfied by the view, she made some adjustments to the dials, levers and switches.

"There," she said with an air of triumph. "Take a look."

I bent over and peered through the lens, and as I did, I felt Holli pressing her body against mine. I tried to ignore it.

Once my eyes focused on what I was seeing, I had no trouble continuing to ignore her.

I was looking at a drawing of myself, looking through a telescope, with an animated slut wrapped around me.

"Her name is Dane Gatson. She's very promising, don't you think?"

I swallowed. "This is insane."

I pulled away from the eyepiece, straightening up.

"That's interesting," I said as I made a step toward the door. "I think I'm beginning to underst-"

Before I could finish the sentence, she pushed me against a dresser and kissed me, sliding a hand into the back of my boxers.


	12. Chapter 12: Hoofnagel's

I yanked her hand out of my shorts and shoved her back.

"That's it. We're done here."

"Are you sure?" she said. "Because I'm almost positive I felt you kissing back a couple times."

I was, but I hadn't been thinking for a moment.

"That was a mistake," I said.

"Yes..." She slowly unbuttoned my shirt. "A sexy mistake."

I pushed her hands away. "No, just a regular one."

The line worked just as well as it did in the cartoon I stole it from.

She let out a feminine version of that sound Yosemite Sam made when his plans were thwarted. "If I didn't know any better, I'd swear you were Frank Harris's kid!"

I pulled the cardboard bedroom door open. "Coming from you, I consider that a compliment."

I marched through the outer living space, marching to the door, but I stopped a moment before stepping out.

I still had questions.

I spun around, facing the temptress, who was still trailing me.

"How did you find me?" I said. "How did you know I was here to begin with? Did you use that big telescope thing, or what?"

She shook her head. "A Little Sneezer told me."

Holli marched over to a cardboard couch, pulling the white rodent out by his ear.

Sneezer just waved at me.

"I understand you have a date with a noid," Holli said.

"Yeah. At least that's halfway normal."

I would have said `normal,' but we were talking about Jessica here.

"Well, if you're not too busy," she said. "There's one more thing I want to show you. I think you'll find it twice as interesting as my telescope."

"Let me guess," I said. "It's under your sheets."

She shook her head. "I'll admit that is interesting, but the thing I'm talking about will positively blow your mind."

I just stared at her, waiting for the punch line.

"Come to the Halftone Club at six tonight. There's something you've just got to see."

"Six o' clock?" I said. "This place has no sense of time! How will I even know?"

She slipped a wristwatch off her ankle, handing it to me. "Here. It's from _Back to the Future_, one of the few cartoons that tell time. Most doodles here have an internal clock."

I put it on. "Thanks."

Holli reached into Sneezer's diaper, pulling out...my other pair of pants.

"Here," she said, throwing them to me. "You're going to need these."

"Wow!" I said. "Thank _you_! Really!"

She giggled. "Don't mention it."

I stared at Sneezer in disgust. "Why did you even have those?"

The mouse shrugged and said "I don't know," but I guessed it had something to do with him getting his jollies, sexually.

"Do you happen to also have my other shirt in there?"

Holli also dug this out of his diaper.

"I'm not sure I want to know how you fit all that stuff in there without creating a bulge."

"It's called Hammer Space," the mouse said.

"What a weird name for your rectum," I muttered.

I turned to face Holli.

"Um," I said. "Would it be too much trouble for you to also toss me my wallet?"

Holli shook her head. "Sorry, Drew. You and Sneezer had an agreement. I'd _hate for you to go back on your word_."

"Fine," I groaned, rolling my eyes. "Whatever. Thanks for the pants, at least. It's been..._real_."

I pulled my pants back on and pushed my way out the cardboard door.

"So," I said to Sneezer as we made our way to the elevators. "Do you know where I can find this Hoofnagel's place?"

The mouse nodded. "Most doodles know where that is. It was right up the street from where we came in."

I raised a hand to the elevator call button and stopped. "What about Officer Harris? What about the police?"

"We'll figure something out. You still got that pencil, right?"

I dug in my pocket and showed him the stub.

"Keep it handy," he said.

The first door that opened when I pushed down was the one that looked like a skull, with googly eyes.

Eager to get out of that place, I hurried over to it.

"I...wouldn't go in that one if I were you," he said.

"Oh yeah? Why not? Is it just an empty elevator shaft?"

The mouse just shook his head.

"What will it do? Send me to a cartoon devil or something?"

"Nothing _that bad_..." he said.

"Will it at least get me to the first floor?"

"It'll definitely do that!"

Annoyed at him being so mysterious, I marched through the open mouth.

The elevator dropped so suddenly that I thought someone had cut the cables.

Through a pair of small windows, I could see strange objects rushing past, skulls, bones, ghoulish faces with distended jaws and long tongues, a clock, a giant eye...it was like the opening sequence to _The Twilight Zone_.

As we fell, I also heard electronic music starting up. Not the _Twilight Zone_ theme, but an oddly familiar tune. Something with a beat.

The elevator came to an abrupt stop, and a giant boot kicked me and Sneezer in the rear.

We went flying through this darkened void filled with surreal bric-a-brac, landing on a conveyor belt, and then I recognized the music I was hearing.

It was the theme song to Filmation's _Go-Go Ghostbusters_.

We rapidly rolled down the conveyor belt, and in the space of a couple minutes, my clothing was yanked off by a set of mechanical arms, I received a shower, and I found myself being clothed in an animated yellow and brown uniform and boots, with a ghost belt buckle.

A heavy brown backpack was slapped on my back, and another boot kicked me off into space.

I screamed until I fell down a bone slide, which twisted around for what seemed like miles.

I landed with a painful thump in the back seat of a yellow Model T Ford.

"Don't say I didn't warn you!" the similarly uniformed mouse said as it landed next to me.

I gawked at my surroundings. We were in an alleyway, but, strangely enough, I didn't see the same buildings I saw when I first approached Holli's high rise.

"Where are we?" I asked my companion.

"Behind the Go-Go Ghostbuster base. Where else?"

The car coughed and twisted around. "H-hey!"

It sputtered like it were having engine trouble. "W-what's the b-big idea!"

"Take us to Hoofnagel's," Sneezer said. "And step on it."

"Wait," I said. "Where's my clothes?"

"They're in your backpack," the mouse said. "Right next to your ghost blasting equipment."

"G-g-ghost blaster!" the car cried. "You're not g-going on one of those ka-ka-krazy m-missions are you guys?"

"No way," I said.

"He's just going on a _date_," Sneezer added.

"Pshew!" the car sighed in relief. "Not to wuh-worry, I'll hah-hah-have you over there in two cuh cuh clicks of a cuh cuh carburettor!"

"This was a great idea," the mouse said. "Harris will hardly recognize you in that uniform."

"I _hope_ so," I said.

The car dropped on its scissor legs, and a rocket engine shot us down a street of generic looking buildings, and then, all of a sudden, we were stopping in front of an old timey looking soda fountain at the corner of an intersection.

The place was styled after the soda shops of the 1950's. Lots of chrome, art deco furniture, and neon. Nothing too insane. Rather...calm for a cartoon locale.

When I saw the bearded white face of the proprietor, it all snapped into place.

_The Get Along Gang_.

Mr. Hoofnagel was a goat, or rather, a _ram_, with curly horns and a striped apron. He shared many similarities with the kindly old ice cream clerk from _The Brady Bunch_. For a moment, I was pondering whether or not either the sheep or the girl dog in the story temporarily worked behind the counter, but I decided that one never happened.

This might sound crazy, but the reason why I liked Mr. Hoofnagel, at least while I was stuck in that crazy universe, was because he was actually _boring_. Although that's insulting to say about someone in the real world, in Cool World boring was a very precious commodity. I knew (at least from the cartoons) that I could trust Hoofnagel to be a straight shooter.

I marched up to the soda counter occupied with a moose, the girl sheep and female dog, smiling at Cool World's Most Uninteresting Ram.

"Hi, Mr. Hoofnagel," I said. "How are you?"

I refrained from calling him `pops,' but I wanted to.

He stared at me. "You're Drew Deebes, aren't you? Jack Deebes' son?"

I leaned over the counter, lowering my voice. "Whatever they're saying, they're wrong. I came here with a very real non-animated girlfriend, and that's who I'm leaving with. Could you do me a huge favor and not tell anyone I'm here?"

The ram nodded slowly. "Does that include your nice lady friend with the glasses?"

I swallowed. "No. She's, uh, _fine_. Did you see her come in?"

Hoofnagel pointed a paw at a booth in the back corner.

The girl was reading a book in front of a partially consumed strawberry milkshake. I smiled, amused by the seeming normalness of the scene.

Actually, _more than amused_. I had to check myself to make sure there weren't any Valentine hearts floating out of my chest.

"Thanks," I told the clerk.

Then, glancing at the door, I thought about Officer Harris and muttered, "And for the record, _we're just friends_."

Hoofnagel nodded. "May I suggest a pair of chocolate sundaes for the _just friends_?"

I shook my head. "I don't have any money."

"That hasn't stopped me before," he said, casting the dog an accusing glance. "But it's up to you."

"I'd hate to impose," I protested.

"Relax, Drew," said Sneezer. "I got this." And he threw a few bills on the counter.

A couple seconds later, I was holding a pair of soda glasses filled with chocolate drizzled ice cream.

Sneezer took up a seat next to a gray wolf looking character in a headband and track suit, sipping something foamy as he nodded his head toward the girl. I decided to pretend he wasn't there.

Feeling a little embarrassed, I slipped into the chair opposite my new female acquaintance, quietly setting down the sundaes.

"Hi!" I said nervously.

"Meep!" she cried, and a pair of cat's ears exploded from her hair. She slapped the book on the table.

I chuckled. "I didn't mean to startle you."

"It's okay," she said with an embarrassed laugh, her slender fingers struggling to push the springy feline ears back into her hair.

She only succeeded in concealing one. The other just snapped back out like part of a broken umbrella.

"Sorry," she said. "The second one's always a little tricky."

"You're fine," I said. "Leave it out. _It's cute_."

Now both ears stuck straight out of her hair. Her face turned a deep salmon color. "I know it sounds silly, but I always felt self conscious about them."

"Look around you," I said. "You don't have anything to worry about."

I picked up her book, staring at the cover.

Frank Herbert's _Dune_.

"Wait a minute. This is a real book!"

I flipped through the pages. Everything was there, from Paul's trial at the Gom Jabbar to the final battle with Baron Harkonnen. "Where did you get this?"

"The Land of the Lost Stuff," she said. "Beneath The Lost Sock Laundromat. It's where all the good noid stuff winds up. There must be a spike around there somewhere."

"Interesting choice of reading," I said.

She nodded. "I love the depth and complexity of the story. He's thought of everything. The culture, the economy, the religious society..."

"I wish more doodles had your kind of class," I said. "Most the ones I've met so far seem to think books are only for hitting people with."

Vanessa chuckled. "Yeah. Around here, the bookstores only carry _Romeo and Juliet, A Christmas Carol_, nonfiction how-to books, and anything with a pun in the title."

"_Gone with the Wind_ and _The Sun Also Rises_," I guessed.

"Exactly. I tried reading their _Moby Dick_ once, but it's only the first sentence and a bunch of blank paper."

I chuckled and shook my head. "`_Call me Ishmael_...'"

"So," she said. "What did you talk with Holli about?"

I shrugged. "Something about my father...and holes in the fabric of space/time. She was making me feel _really uncomfortable._"

She chortled through her nose. "Holli _has_ that affect on people."

"Anyways," I said. "I was glad to get out of there."

She stared at the sundaes. "Is this for me?"

"No," I joked. "I was just really hungry." I pushed it toward her.

Vanssa smiled, digging in.

After swallowing a mouthful, she pointed her spoon at my outfit. "What's with the getup? Trying to impress me?"

"I don't know," I said. "Is it working?"

She giggled. "Maybe?"

"Actually, it was just something that got thrown on me."

Vanessa laughed through her nose as she swallowed another bite.

I decided to try a bite of my own, just to see what it tasted like. It turned out the stuff tasted like plain yogurt, not to be confused with vanilla.

An awkward silence fell between us as we stared into each other's eyes.

Little Valentine hearts popped out of her blouse, floating up around her head.

Her face turned a solid pink as she raised her ice cream spoon, stabbing each heart until it popped.

She gave me a nervous grin as another heart drifted out of her shirt collar.

"S-sorry," she said in almost a whisper.

"It's okay," I said. "It's-"

"I know, it's _cute_!" she blurted, her face flushing red. "You don't understand! It's not okay! It's not! You can see my secret feelings and I can't see any of yours!"

I drew a heart on a napkin, thinking I would have a paper heart to show her, but instead, to my satisfaction, I created a floating Valentine heart instead.

It was a little tricky, but I caught the heart between my thumb and forefinger, holding it up to the side of my head. "Does this help?"

Vanessa chuckled and sighed. "Maybe?" She then took my hand and squeezed it.

I smiled, giving the ram an uncomfortable sideways glance.

Vanessa turned her head that way. "Where's your little friend?"

I stared at the empty stool. She was right. Sneezer was gone!

I really hadn't been paying attention. He could have gone _anywhere_.

"He's not exactly my friend," I said. "He's a little creep, and he stole my wallet." I thought about mentioning the deal I made with the mouse, but wasn't sure how she'd react.

"That's too bad," she said.

I shrugged. "I'll figure something out." And then I smirked at her hopefully. "In the meantime, maybe we could, I don't know, go on another date, maybe see this Land of Lost Stuff you're talking about."

Another heart flew up around her head. "I'd...like that."

I grinned. "I can tell."

Vanessa gave me a playful jab. "You rat."

She leaned over the table, gazing into my eyes.

I leaned forward, smiling, anxiously waiting for those brightly colored animated lips to touch my real ones.

Already I could feel my skin tingle as her face and the breath from her nostrils disturbed the air particles surrounding my skin.

The subtle atmospheric music, for some reason, had shifted to _This Kiss_ by Faith Hill. Ordinarily, I would have complained, but my mind was on _other things_, so I just ignored it.

All of a sudden, I notice her wristwatch flashing and beeping.

It was like one of those `Return to Base' watches they had on superhero-ish cartoons like MASK.

She blushed, retreating to her chair.

"What was that?" I said.

"Nothing," she mumbled. "I, uh...gotta go to the bathroom."

"Is that superhero code for `I gotta go save the world now'?"

She laughed. "No, I really gotta pee. The watch is just to tell me to take my insulin."

Before I could question her about her diabetes, and eating sugary ice cream, she hurried off through a door in the corner of the shop.

I sat there for roughly eight to ten minutes, waiting for her.

When I thought about how most cartoons, _like the one featuring Mr. Hoofnagel's shop, for example_, never showed there being a restroom, I got curious.

Curious, and somewhat in need of actually using said facilities, if they existed.

I marched around to the place I'd seen Vanessa disappear into, and actually found a bathroom.

If it's horrible to sleep with a noid, I can't imagine what kind of damage human urine does to cartoon sewer and septic systems. But I had to go.

I'm not sure I want to know the result.

I came back out and waited for Vanessa some more.

The Get-Along-Gang characters left the scene, but I could still see Heathcliff and his girlfriend Sonya sharing a soda in the opposite corner.

"Did your friend stand you up?" the ram asked me.

"Yeah?" I groaned. "I guess it's just as well. _You know the law_."

Seeing her book still on the table, I handed it to `Mr. H.' "Could you give this back to her when she comes back?"

He nodded. "Good luck on finding your noid girl."

"Thanks for not turning me in to the cops, Mr. H."

"That girl needs a friend who understands her," he said. "Maybe one day, if something happens to you like Officer Harris..."

I swallowed hard, thinking about how horrible that kind of existence would be. "Yeah...that...would be _swell_."

Feeling a hand tugging my arm, I turned and saw the little Ghostbuster mouse looking at me with a very grave expression. "Drew! I found her!"

"Who?" I said. "Vanessa?"

The mouse smacked his head, then dug in his uniform, pulling out one of those Car-X birds.

When it saw me, it made that shortened version of the _Bridge Over River Kwai_ song that certain cel phones make when you get a text.

It flew to me, nuzzling against my neck.

I suddenly understood why Jessica let them sit on her. They were adorable.

"Where is she?" I cried.

"She's at the Savoy," Sneezer replied. "But you're not going to like it."

The bird mournfully whistled the opening to Beethoven's Fifth.


	13. Chapter 13: The Savoy

"What," I said. "Am I not going to like?"

Sneezer frowned. "It's more dramatic if I actually show you."

"I'm human," I said. "I like my life to be drama free. Could you please spare me the grief and just _tell me_ the bad news?"

"I'm sorry, Drew," Sneezer said. "I'm a _doodle. It just won't play._"

I rolled my eyes. "Let's go see this...`bad news'."

Suddenly Jessica's fat birdie popped out of Vanessa's half finished sundae, shaking ice cream off its feathers.

The fowl looked me in the eyes like it had something terribly important to say, then busted out with the opening to _Long Tall Sally._

I glanced at the creature with slight annoyance. "Did she ditch you too, buddy?"

The creature replied by singing _Solitaire_ by Peter Ceterra.

I squinted at him. "Wait. Weren't there more than two of you guys?"

That got me _The Backstabbers_ by the O'Jays.

I followed Sneezer outside, only to find out that our talking classic roadster had driven off.

The mouse yanked off the top of a garbage can, throwing cans, food wrappers and banana peels on the sidewalk.

"What are you doing?" I hissed.

"This is the only way across the street without getting hit by a car."

He sat the can back down, peering inside.

"So you're going to _roll_ across the street?" I said with skepticism. "Forgive me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that ordinarily result in you getting thrown back to the side you started from?"

Sneezer didn't answer.

After scooting it back and forth a few times, he said, "Aha!"

Of course the bird on my shoulder responded by singing _Take On Me_.

The mouse jumped inside the trash can and disappeared.

"You've _got_ to be kidding!" I groaned as I leaned over the receptacle.

I did a double take. I was looking down at a _staircase_.

"It's just like _Inspector Gadget_!" I muttered.

My bird whistled the theme song to the show.

I just rolled my eyes and wiggled down the narrow opening.

It seemed fine until I reached the bottom, and I had to kind of turn around and squish myself down to fit in the tight little compartment.

The stairs led to a narrow little crawl space. Since I couldn't open my finger and turn it into a flashlight, I could only fumble blindly in the dark until I caught a glimpse of the mouse's brightly colored uniform pants.

The mouse had stopped in the tunnel, refusing to budge for an entire minute.

If he hadn't been wearing that outfit, I would have tried to steal back my wallet.

"What," I sighed in frustration. "What now?"

"Shhh," Sneezer said. "This requires concentration. Crawl ahead at the wrong time, and you might end up on the same side, in a lady's restroom, or a manhole under that busy street. Maybe even inside a police station."

So we waited.

"Now," Sneezer said, crawling quickly ahead.

We popped out a blue newspaper dispensing machine in front of a hotel.

I scrambled out onto the sidewalk, staring at the fancy black awning and red carpet. The gold letters on the awning and the sign above told me we were in the right place.

Sneezer tugged my arm and tried to stop me, but I marched up the carpet, pausing in front of an elegantly dressed doorman. "I'm looking for someone here," I said. "Another noid. Her name's Jessica."

"Yes," the man sneered. "_I suppose you are._"

I groaned, attempting to step around him, but he just zipped back and forth like the Roadrunner, blocking my path.

"I'm sorry, sir," the man said. "We have a dress code."

I looked down at my outfit and sighed. "Fine. Wait a minute."

I stepped into a nearby alleyway, changed into my funeral clothes, and tried it again.

The doorman, upon seeing my outfit, again said, "I'm sorry, sir. We have a dress code."

"Does this have anything to do with me being a noid?"

The man just turned his nose up at me. "If you must ask, you'll never know."

I sighed, frowning at the mouse.

"It's not what you wear, it's who you know," he whispered, tugging my sleeve.

I followed the mouse into the alleyway, to a window beneath a fire escape.

After stacking up a pile of boxes to get a good view, he wiped a spot on the window clean, and I could see a large carpeted ballroom with a big golden chandelier, and one of those `big band' groups like you see on _I Love Lucy_ or _Lawrence Welk_, complete with decorated stage shields, neckties, and a tuba player.

They were playing the instrumental version of _Careless Whisper_ by George Michael.

It was a classy crowd. Wealthy people from _Tintin_ comics, a few maybe from the Bruce Wayne segments of _Batman_, and a bunch of well dressed people from various Japanese cartoons and serious Sunday paper comics. Mary Worth, Brenda Starr, etcetera. I'm ashamed to say it, but I recognized a few faces from _Beverly Hills Teens_ and _Gem_. I even saw the blue and red rabbits from _Tiny Toons_ pretending to be the `Vanderbunnies.'

As I squinted at the crowd of toons, trying to locate my human girlfriend, I suddenly noticed a dog in a trenchcoat and shark toothed bunny peering through the glass next to me.

"Mind if we look too?" the dog said.

"Actually yes," I replied. "Yes I do mind."

Sneezer took a large silver cannon shaped device out of his backpack, blasting the dog with an energy beam.

The dog exploded, presumably to reappear in a spooky castle surrounded by ghosts.

He did the same thing for the dog.

We returned to our spying.

I spotted _Sailor Moon's_ Tuxedo Mask and a bunch of royal types from _He-Man_.

And then I saw _her_. With _him_.

Jessica had her arms wrapped around some guy that looked like a kangaroo from one of those _Tank Girl_ comics. Brown, long eared, kind of a homely dog-like face, but handsomely muscled and clad in a tuxedo.

He had an eyepatch, and his suit top had a neckline that plunged far enough to expose a large portion of his chest.

Jessica now wore a shimmering translucent gown, with sparkles, kind of like the one the damsel wore on _Dragon's Lair_, through which I could clearly see the same lingerie piece she had on before she entered the cartoon realm.

They gazed into each other's eyes, smiling as they danced to the song.

"She's just having fun," I said.

Sneezer shook his head. "I think there's more to it than that."

I stared in shock as the kangaroo's muzzle tenderly pressed against her lips, and she kissed back.

"Okay, so she's snogging a kangaroo," I said with a frown.

The kangaroo's hand slid down around Jessica's hips, fingers curling around her buttocks, but she didn't mind. She just kissed him a little more strongly.

"Well, shit," I muttered.

Booga, or whoever he was, whispered something in her ear, causing her to giggle and nod.

The two of them hurried away, out of view.

"How'd you find out about this?" I asked.

Sneezer gave me an embarrassed grin. "I was watching them while you were..._enjoying Vanessa's company_."

He dug out a stack of photographs, the top one showing Jessica and her kangaroo date in the ice cream shop, holding hands as they gazed lovingly in each other's eyes.

"Why didn't you tell me about this?" I said. "Or _show_ me this? They were like, what, _behind me the whole time_?"

"You were busy," he said. "I didn't want to interrupt."

He turned to the next photo, which was identical to the first, then the next, which didn't look any different than the first two.

"What?"

"It's a flip book," he said, turning the photos in a rapid succession.


	14. Chapter 14: Cat Flap

You're reading this journal thanks to a little ingenuity with a sewing machine.

I am currently wearing, to the best of my knowledge, the only piece of lingerie ever to feature a pocket. I mean, it's counterintuitive, right?

I left this phone on the charger all night. It's a lucky thing, too. This find is too important to leave undocumented.

Ordinarily, I document my findings in notebooks or sketchbooks, but since I _left all that stuff in the room_, this will have to do. I don't trust cartoon notebooks.

If you see any errors, it's probably because I'm using StenoSnap to translate shorthand into legible text. It's time consuming enough just trying to type with these teeny little buttons.

My only regret about this expedition is the lack of a reliable camera. My good camera, unfortunately, was in the bedroom, and we couldn't get in.

Two weeks ago, I was in bed masturbating, and the old phone fell off the covers, into a bucket of paint thinner. Of course it was toast.

I still had a warranty, so I took it in the store, and they got me the refurbished one I'm using now.

It's an okay phone, but the camera is flaky. Sometimes I have to pull the battery out to make it work, and then it will only save every other picture.

Sometimes I'll have a photo in there when I go to bed, only to find it gone when I wake up, so yeah, not the greatest tool for a serious researcher.

In retrospect, there's a lot of tools that I should have brought with me, but I didn't expect to be sneezed through a wall immediately after attempting sexual intercourse.

If only I had checked the phone a week earlier.

If only this funeral had been held later...

But what can you do?

Encounter Record 0.1.1: Drew Deebes

As stated previously in Sketchbook Entry 311.14.5, the Deebes funeral was inherently suspicious, and therefore meriting investigation.

The use of Holli's dress _did_ prove beneficial to ongoing research, for, although unsuccessful in attracting paranormal entities with the outfit, I _did_ successfully catch the eye of the artist's son.

I did the research. _Totally single_.

He's not bad looking, either. Not muscular, not a Chippendale's dancer, but I can tell he _does_ go to the gym occasionally.

Plus he's a _Deebes_. How could I _not_ get close to him? Even if he doesn't help me find the Cool World or the spike, or connect me with cartoon realities, I had a chance of marrying into the family fortune...or at least gather enough material to write a bestselling biographical piece.

The reports are correct about him working in a tax office. The man has no imagination. He didn't believe anything about cartoon realities until I showed him the item in Sketchbook 200.3.1, and I'm not sure even that totally convinced him.

We had a nice chat at Starbucks, and after awhile of showing various evidences to him, I wore him down enough to agree to come with me to the Union Plaza.

I've been saving up for awhile. I already told you about my troubles exploring the hotel in 110.13.20 and 141.20.5, hence why I haven't made any further expeditions up until this point. That's two years of waiting. So, yeah, I've been saving, and a lucky thing too, because a top floor suite is incredibly expensive.

My objectives: A. Find more evidence of cartoon realities, and B. sleep with Drew. Not necessarily in that order.

Initial visit to suite disappointingly mundane. Opted for Objective B, using item in Sketchbook 90.111.12 to direct his _energies_ to the _proper activity_.

This is when Drew spotted previously undocumented specimen, "Sneezer", apparently a Warner Brothers _Tiny Toons_ property.

The aloof creature did not show until we made attempts to proceed with coitus, during which it sneezed very violently, violating the laws of physics by sending us both through a wall.

I forgot all about sex the moment we entered that room.

It was like discovering King Tut's tomb. The walls were all covered with strange and mystical glyphs, which came to life the moment I touched them.

(Note to self: Must include descriptions and sketches of glyphs when I get home!)

No time to be ultra specific, but I do need to jot down a few observations about the glyphs we found on the walls:

Item 1: The room's occupant, presumably a man named Heinreich Baubels, was experimenting with the force of animation. His image of the French clown appears to be his first successful test.

Note: It appears as if wearing Holli's clothing while touching these glyphs causes each one to activate. It also seems to have a stabilizing effect on the outfit, causing the fabric to maintain an animated appearance. I have already mentioned the texture change in other notebooks.

Also, Drew is as good as mine. I wasn't so sure in the suite, he sort of _hesitated, _but he, um, _took some initiative_ while I was distracted with the glyph. I think it's safe to say that the rumors are incorrect, he _actually likes women_.

And, more importantly, he likes _me_.

That being said, I didn't particularly care for his _timing_.

Moving on.

Item 2: Appears to be a test of creating impossible three dimensional objects.

What I pulled from the wall was the Pythagorean ideal. A purely mathematical construct made physical. I believe the Pythagoreans considered something of that order, if found in nature, to be absolute proof of divinity.

Have we found that proof? It is unclear to say. I think I may have watched the movie _Pi_ too many times.

Note: The cube became paper in Drew's hands, supporting my theory that the outfit itself is causing the drawings to become..._actual_. Still, I don't believe any of this would have been possible if we had not been in the top story of the Union Plaza.

Item 3: A cat eating a mouse sandwich. This appears to be some sort of grisly political statement. Judging by the (I assume) renter of this room, perhaps it speaks about the late 1930's Germany, and its relationship to the rest of the world. (Or maybe vice versa, but we found no pith helmets anywhere).

Item 4 was a _cat_.

A real life cat.

It seems Baubel was also experimenting with putting things _in_ the wall.

The feline was terrified. Poor cat.

The scary thing is, he could have just as easily put a _person_ in there, essentially burying them alive.

It is unclear how he put the cat in there at all, but I believe it had something to do with the spike, which I will elaborate upon later.

Item 5 probably should be lumped together with Item 4, being that it is another experiment with putting real objects inside a flat two dimensional plane.

This time he used a bowl of wax fruit. Not sure if he did this before or after the cat.

Item 6: It seems Baubel was successful in opening portals to cartoon realities, although what we saw was an apparent anachronism.

I could literally see the Smurf village. In fact, this was a window overlooking _Cookie's dwelling_. The guy with the chefs hat.

This panoramic vista shouldn't have existed prior to the 1980's, in any reality, but who knows, it may have looked different in the past.

Item 7, arguably the most mundane, was by far the most fascinating of all the items, for it gave the history of the spikes. Yes, that's _spikes_, as in _plural_. Five of them! Just think about how this will expand my research!

I guess he was a scientist during the Second World war, and his weapon project had unforeseen side effects. I'll write more about that one when I get back, as all the information is already in a convenient file folder on the hotel bed, ready to be scanned and posted online.

Item 8: Our scientist was busy. He actually created a doorway to an animated world.

It was a very smug, sexist sort of door, and it was locked.

Drew suggested I use my _feminine charms_ to get it open, as it was animated, but (ahem), I have to draw the line somewhere (no pun intended).

This leads us to...Item 9: Plunger Gun.

In my search for a key, I found a strange looking sketch of a handgun, amusingly hidden beneath a bible, like people would do for a three dimensional gun.

This appears to be sort of a toilet plunger grappling hook in the style of the Genesis video game entitled _Quackshot_. Experimentation led me to discovery of Items 10-13, "Birdies," by far the most incredible find so far.

Ordinarily, when I am injured in the head, I only experience pain and sparkly things swimming through my vision. I do not see cartoon birds. And these are _so_ cute!

My birdies proved to be of tremendous value when we uncovered Item 14:

The wall safe.

Hidden behind a nightstand, safe became three dimensional upon contact, but as I attempted a combination, it reverted to its two dimensional state, indicating significantly less proximity to the spike.

Thanks to their helpful tweeting, my helpful and somewhat handsome assistant cracked the safe combination, and we were treated to more of the professor's secret files, a pile of..._play money_, a real handgun, and a wallet. No key, of course, but I found Item 15 easily enough behind a dresser.

The door ate our only key, but I figured once I stepped through that threshold, I wasn't going to come back for a long time.

Well, not until I gathered as much research as possible about the place. I figured I could find another way in somehow.

If you've read all my journals and sketchbooks up to this point, you already know what an opportunity this was for me, and how important the research would be, so the moment that door unlocked and opened, I didn't hesitate for a second. I jumped through.

If I end up being trapped inside a drawing forever, so be it.

Briefly, I thought about going back and getting the manager to unlock the suite so I could get my stuff (_and get dressed!_), but they'd probably just rope the place off and keep me from going back in. The way I figure, this was my one and only chance to get into Cool World, so, boom, I took it.

I was in an alleyway. Furball from _Tiny Toons_ was digging around in the trash cans for something. Knowing his history, I briefly considered adopting him or putting him in an animal shelter, but decided I could do that later, once I studied this Cool World some more and understood my impact on its environment.

The scenery at the corner reminded me of several Warner Brothers cartoons. Bright, really simple looking structures, no sign of weathering or fading, or _detail_ for that matter, except around the facades where you could see a business in operation.

There was a _lot_ to choose from. A _lot_ of places to shop. I had only stuffed a single wad of cartoon bills into my outfit, so I decided to hold onto it and make it count.

I _did_ stop in the flower shop for a moment, but only to visit Dot from _Animaniacs_.

I said "Polka Dot." I couldn't resist.

After dancing to her music for a moment, I bought a little lotus flower to put in my hair, mostly to show appreciation for the song.

I stepped out, and wandered up the street.

I got _many_ stares. I'm not sure if it were because I was human, or the fact that I was semi-naked, but I _did_ get a lot of whistles and cat-calls. The canine characters were especially voicetrous about it, but I got it from birds and rabbits, and other things too.

Hearing strange noises, and feeling _vibrations _running down my body, I looked down at my outfit and noticed that all my patches had come to life, their eyes bright and colorful as they stared at their surroundings, or, rather, _ogling them_, since I was part of the scenery.

Daisy Duck didn't like what she saw, jumping off my outfit and running down an alleyway.

Betty Boop vacated her place at once, running down the street.

My cartoon wolf got too unruly, so I threw him into a flower box.

I poked Roger Rabbit in the eyes, and he fell backwards into the patch, and I heard all kinds of noises, like he'd fallen down a staircase into an orchestra pit.

I dispatched the others similarly. The moment I had a patch clear, the vacant circle of color would flash and sparkle, turning into a simple star, or a horseshoe, or some other Lucky Charms/poker/slot machine symbol.

The females didn't want to stick around (except Fifi. Maybe she likes women?), so it was mostly the males I had to send packing.

Well, except for the beaver, because any time I tried to...do anything with him, he made me feel funny between my legs.

I mean, _really_ uncomfortable...

Or maybe _too_ comfortable...if you know what I mean.

To the point where I could barely walk.

I eventually just told it to behave, promising to let it do whatever it wants with me later tonight.

A few blocks down from the Sam and Max Detective Agency, I heard music coming from the lower level of a book and antique store.

I distinctly heard _Changes_ by Yes. I stopped in my tracks, not believing what my ears were hearing.

The place was called The Cat Flap. It was one of those quaint little clubs where you go down a fenced in staircase on the side of the other business to enter.

Of course I _had_ to check it out. It had been _forever_ since I've heard that song, and I wanted to hear more.

Beneath the stone and concrete building, I discovered what I can only describe as a...a _speakeasy_, if that's even the right word.

A nightclub type situation, but more classy. The walls were brick, but they were new looking and partially obscured with curtains, sculptures, framed pictures of musicians (both real and animated) and a collection of African masks and other artifacts.

I saw rows of little tables with table cloths and lamps, where quite a few cartoon males and females sat with their dates, most recognizably Archie and Betty, both dressed in somewhat Bohemian fashion.

The place had interesting clientele. Although mostly animals and strange looking Anime characters (I think I spotted the _Robotech_ guy and his girlfriend), everyone had clothes on.

I know that sounds weird, but there's a lot of naked cartoon characters...out there, and they weren't so much at the club.

Many Beatnik types, cats with goatees and little hats, sat on stools or at the tables, drinking...lattes or beer, or something else. Oh, and that fat guy from _Voltron_.

A band played on a stage along the back wall, shifting from Yes to a performance of _One Thing Leads to Another. _I couldn't help dancing a little and snapping my fingers as I wandered around.

It was a fairly large crowd, but as much as I tried to blend in, it didn't exactly work. I kept getting stares and rude comments. I felt incredibly self conscious, resolving to stop by a dress shop once I left the establishment.

I stopped at the bar, ordering hard lemonade, but it was obscene, so I sent it back, requesting a Dirty Shirley, which turned out to be a big grumpy mud caked woman who cussed at me until I sent that one back as well.

I hesitated before ordering again. I had no desire to meet Samuel Adams or a logger at the moment, and boiler makers were sure to give me leprosy.

Note to self: Use care when ordering toon drinks!

I thought Peach Schnapps would be safe, but it bit my tongue when I tried to drink it, so I just ordered a beer, creeping into a corner table.

The band itself was..._fascinating_.

If you've ever watched cartoons in the 1980's, you may have seen a clip or two of Kidd Video. The basic premise is that a real rock band got sucked through a mirror by an evil cartoon mastermind, wherein they were all transformed into cartoons to become his musical slaves forever, but they escaped.

And now here they all were, playing The Fixx.

You can probably understand why I never took my eyes off the stage.

The group had reorganized somewhat since I'd last seen them on TV. For one thing, _they changed their name_.

They were now _The Spark_. Not a great rock band name, but a terrific boy band name, I think.

They had also changed outfits, a rarity for cartoons, taking on sort of a boy band look, you know, dressed like groomsmen relaxing after the Big Day, which, honestly, is cute.

To one side was the narrow bodied, curly haired Ash, fingers tickling one of those over the shoulder keyboards popular during the Reagan era. He had on a suit coat, a white shirt, and an American flag tie dangling loose around his neck. I think he looked more attractive than he used to, but with that broccoli shaped hair and big schnoz, he still looked too much like John Arbuckle or maybe Animated Howie Mandel to be appealing to me.

You're going to laugh, but I actually _did_ have a crush on Wiz Kid. I know he's fat, and it seems a little weird, but he's cute, and arguably the most interesting character in the band.

Blonde hair, glasses, he kind of looked like Cousin Oscar on the Brady Bunch. Adorable. His shirt hung open as he pounded on the drums...

On backup guitar, I saw a Latino chick. Carla, I think her name was. Today she was dressed like a hooker. I tried to ignore her.

Interestingly enough, Kidd Vid was no longer the lead singer. They had him doing guitar.

He was good looking in a Bruce Springsteen sort of way. Spiky hair, leather pants, white shirt only buttoned halfway, sleeves rolled up, biker gloves...I still liked Wiz Kid better.

That was, until I saw the new lead singer.

Arguably the most handsome cartoon character I've ever seen.

Two words: Well drawn.

He was a man, he was a kangaroo, and he was gorgeous.

Brow, built like Spider-Man (Not hugely muscled, but well shaped), square jaws, and..._those ears_. I just wanted to gnaw on them.

He had a sort of mane bursting out of that unbuttoned shirt, and _those stretch leather pants_...let's just say I liked what I saw.

The (man?) the _guy_ only had one eye, but when our gaze met, it was _magic_.

And then a strange thought occurred to me.

_I had seen him before._

_In a random sketch I made at the Union Plaza._

Even as an image on paper, he _did_ kinda turn me on.

_And now he was real._

Immediately, I felt a funny vibration between my legs.

"Later!" I scolded my beaver.

My panties obeyed, but my legs still trembled as I watched the kangaroo perform.

He grabbed the microphone almost like he were holding me, and then I hear him singing _The One I Love _by REM, his good eye never leaving mine.

I know I was sitting in a back corner booth when he started, but somehow I _floated closer_ when our eyes met.

It was the teddy. I'm sure of it.

At the end of the song, I was seated in the front row.

Not like I minded, or anything.

When the song ended, and they started playing a cover of Westlife's _More Than Words_, I found myself drifting up onto the stage. I didn't even _care_ I was being stared at.

Take me, I thought. I'm yours.

In the middle of an instrumental section in the song, the singer marched over to where I stood, and grabbed my hand ever so tenderly, speaking to me in low husky tones.

"Meet me backstage when the show's over."

Little hearts kept fluttering out of my outfit. I could have died.

In fact, a faint came over me so suddenly that I thought I had.


	15. Chapter 15: The Halftone Club

"Lovely," I said as I stared through the window of the Savoy.

I frowned at my rodent companion. "You know, you could have just _told_ me she was cheating on me, and _I would have believed it_."

Sneezer just shook his head. "Like I said, that wouldn't be dramatic. It wouldn't make a very good flashback."

"I don't want a flashback of this!" I barked. "This only depresses me!"

The mouse offered me my wallet. "I'm sorry."

I don't really know why, but I held up a hand to stop him.

"Hold onto it," I said. "I'm not finished yet."

The mouse's eyes widened in shock. "You mean...?"

"Uh-huh," I said.

Sneezer looked confused. "But how will you even get Smurfette's legs that far apart?"

I smacked my face. "Never mind."

"I suppose..._if there's a will, there's a way_..."

"I'm not going to _do_ Smurfette. That's disgusting."

"So you're going to win Jessica back?" Sneezer asked. "If you are, I have some ideas..."

I was not impressed. "What, like a serenade? Or standing below her window and calling `Hark, what light through yonder window breaks?' Is that what you had in mind?"

The mouse turned red. "Maybe?"

"That stuff only works in _cartoons_," I said. "Don't get me wrong, corny romantic overtures might work in some situations, but they generally don't work on women who are satisfied with the man they've got."

As an afterthought, I added, "Or cartoon."

Sneezer looked puzzled. "But you said you weren't finished yet! Surely..."

I just wiggled my eyebrows.

"But she's a doodle, and you're a noid! That's-"

"I know," I said.

The mouse's jaw dropped open. "Ohhh..."

I sat down on a crate, feeling as if divulging that information drained something out of me.

Maybe I was tired. I had certainly gotten a workout the moment I stepped through `the looking glass', and the realization that my metaphorical (and physically attractive) `rabbit' was taken probably _was_ a lot of stress.

"But Vanessa left you!" Sneezer said.

"Maybe, maybe not. Maybe she just...had to turn into a superhero or something. I think she deserves a second chance. All we have to do is find her."

"Okay..." Sneezer stammered, looking nervous. "So when do you think you'll _do it_?"

I swallowed. "We'lll, uh, do it whenever she says we'll do it. _You have to work up to these things_."

That's when I remembered that I had a pair of birds roosting on my shoulder.

Looking at them, I said, "Don't tell anyone, please."

The two sang a line from Skynard's _Don't Ask Me Questions_.

Sneezer paused and thought a moment. "What you said about doing it...that explains a lot."

I frowned. "How so?"

The mouse reddened. "I meant, it explains a lot about why I'm not getting any."

I rubbed my face, feeling rather disgusted. "Great. I'm glad I could..._educate you_."

I glanced at my _Back to the Future_ watch. The digital readout was saying five thirty, but it felt much earlier than that. I supposed that even Marty McFly underwent some time compression in order to fit in his Saturday morning time slot.

"Tell me, Sneezer. How do we get to the Halftone Club?"

The mouse pushed back a dumpster, opening a sewer manhole. We climbed down inside it, crawling through a narrow tunnel, which in turn led to a cramped staircase with a panel along one wall.

The panel featured six switches, which Sneezer flipped in a seemingly random pattern, clicking buttons next to each one.

"What's that?" I asked.

"You'll see. Just remember the order of these numbers. It's important: Four, three, one, five, three, two, one, five, six."

I shook my head. "Whatever."

We climbed another flight, stepping through a door, and I was staring at a carpeted hallway lined with five identical looking hotel doors, six counting ours, each labeled by a number. There was actually seven in total, but the last door was on the south wall, by itself, and it had no number on it.

I stared at the crazily patterned wallpaper, the antique looking wall sconces. The north wall held a framed picture of...some guy in a mustache.

All of a sudden, the south door burst open.

"Deebes! Hold it right there!" I heard someone shout.

I turned just in time to see Officer Harris running up the carpet, accompanied by his bow tied spider pal, and a cyborg cowboy from _Galaxy Rangers_.

Sneezer hissed the sequence of door numbers again, rushing through door number four.

Not wanting to go to prison again, I raced after him...and found myself in a _Scooby Doo_ style chase sequence, complete with corny music, _Top of the World_ by the Carpenters.

Not as amusing when you're actually doing it.

I won't bore you with all the details, but I will give you the highlights of the whole series of shenanigans:

_Scooby Doo_ doors contain a wide variety of worlds for you to run through in order to reach the next door. There was a spaceship corridor, where we bowled over Bucky O' Hare, a desert with a mirage and a genie, an old spooky mansion, an old western saloon (I knocked over Harris by swinging on a chandelier and hitting him with a beer bottle), and a jungle. One even took me out the opening to Snoopy's doghouse and through the front door of Charlie Brown's house.

They also contained stairs leading to...the hotel hallway with the seven doors and the mustached painting.

A lot of times it was just a pitch black room, _explaining_, or at least _hiding the reasons_ why such bizarre things happened on the other side. Like why I suddenly found myself cradled in Harris's arms like some distressed maiden, or why the butler from Miss Terious's house was standing in the doorway dressed like a stripper cowboy and saying "Mmyes."

Thinking I could skip this whole ridiculous performance by using the south door, I opened it, but it only revealed a giant eye. I slammed it shut again.

Also, the windows didn't open.

Like any good _Scooby Doo_ chase, I and Harris kept running into each other. I and Harris weren't complete idiots, but _the room_ kept tripping us up.

Harris, who was probably used to such things, managed to cuff me several times, but the results were hit or miss.

Once, he dragged me through a door and found himself handcuffed to Sneezer...or the Galaxy Ranger.

Then he tried it again, and I came out on the other side wearing cuffs, with no officer in sight.

I opened a door, discovered a roaring abominable snowman, slammed it shut again.

Harris pulled me through door number six, a big darkened room, and guess what? When I stepped out into the hallway again, I was handcuffed to a roaring snow beast. Good times.

When not handcuffed, I found myself avoiding Harris as he ran towards me, or past me.

One time, I opened a door and found him hollering at me. I responded by punching him in the face and running past.

Somehow the alligator from the sewer made an appearance, trying to French me again, but I shoved it off me, running away.

During one encounter with the yeti, I punched _it_ in the face.

Then, after knocking it to the floor with a football charge, I stepped through another doorway and found myself being floored by a large hairy fist.

Somehow, I remembered the sequence, running through the correct sequence of doors, for after going through all these mildly amusing antics, to the tune of the Carpenters and _Rolling Down the River_, all the numbered doors in the room banged open on their own accord, slammed shut, and the door Harris had originally entered through swung open, revealing a street corner.

I'm not sure why it didn't matter that Harris dragged us through the wrong doors and messed up our sequence, but I certainly wasn't the one to complain!

You can probably guess I'd rather have my eyes gouged out than stay there another minute. Out I went.

When Sneezer slammed the door shut behind us, it vanished, taking Officer Harris with it.

With my feet both planted firmly on the pavement, I checked the watch and saw that only a couple minutes had passed. In fact, the exact amount of time it took for the two songs to play to their completion. Still, it _felt_ like an eternity.

It looked like dusk now.

We stood along a side street somewhere, the buildings looking considerably more..._urban_.

To the right of me, I saw the back end of a large carpet store, and a dilapidated old gym, probably home to a bunch of boxing cartoons.

To my left, I could see the loading docks of a massive factory that said Acme on the garage doors.

Across the street was _the club_.

It was apparently a strip club, judging by the neon sign that said "Live girls" and the seductively dancing neon cowgirl on the side of the building. I estimated that you would have needed at least a hundred sets of glass tubes to replicate that girl in real life.

As far as those types of establishments go, it seemed to have a bit more class than the ones I've driven past. The front entrance was an Arabian style arch, and pictures of strip performers were displayed tastefully in movie theater marquee boxes.

The `halftone' part was in reference to those halftone dots commonly used in printing comic strips. These dots, blown up to the size of golf balls, stretched down on either side of the entrance in wide swaths like banners. The rest of the front was concrete, but it had a sort of arabesque trim to it, making it a little less like the scummy bowling alley it could have been.

That, and the red awning helped.

I was about to check out the place, but Sneezer stopped me, checking my watch.

"We've still got some time," he said. "You have to dress up to go in there."

He tugged my arm.

"Does it really matter what we wear? Or is it like the Savoy...?"

Sneezer shook his head. "It's different. C'mon. I know just the place. It's right around the corner."

He led me to a dingy looking thrift store across the street from the gym.

Its official name was Musical Montage Thrift.

"How long will this take?" I groaned.

Sneezer checked the watch again. "One minute, thirty seconds."

I laughed. "Okay?"

I heard music starting up the moment we stepped through the door.

It was _I'm Gonna Pop Some Tags_.

It felt like I shopped for an hour, but I was outside when the song ended, dressed in a cartoon tuxedo.

It seemed the street we walked along now was not a major thoroughfare, for although I sucked in my breath when Sneezer stepped off the curb, I saw no cars approaching in any direction.

After nervously testing the blacktop with my foot, and not seeing any semis, I followed him.

The archway led to a bright movie theater-like hallway, then to an imposing looking set of metal doors with a slot near the top.

Feeling a bit jaunty at the moment, I gave it the shave and a haircut knock.

A plate behind the slot moved sideways, and I was looking at a pair of gorilla eyes.

"What's the password," a voice growled.

"Walt sent me," I said.

The ape paused for a minute, then muttered, "Damn, we need to come up with a new password."

The door came open, and I froze in one spot, taking in my surroundings.

It was a big wide room, its walls decorated with halftone dots of various colors and sizes, Chinese dragons and ceiling to floor mirrors. Evil looking creatures occupied raised booths with white leather seats, sat around tables, smoking and drinking.

Among the weirdos, I saw black riders from the Lord of the Rings cartoon, Popeye's Bluto, and Bruh Rabbit from Street Fight. At one table sat King Koopa, flanked by two turtles. I didn't see Mario, probably because he had his choice of princesses.

For cage dancers, we had a Sailor showing a little too much `Moon', Riffraff's girlfriend Cleo, and some Anime catgirl.

I was fortunate to come in at the end of Justin Timberlake's _I Got My Sexy Back_. The room darkened, stage lights came on, and techno dance music started up.

I noticed that Beavis and Butthead were in the audience, but they made too much noise, so the gorilla dragged them out.

Hearing someone shouting about an entry fee, I turned and saw Sneezer passing Morgana from _Darkwing Duck _a handful of _bills_.

A second later, the lady from the Dino Crisis video game muttered something to the duck, and she handed the money back.

"They said it's covered," Sneezer whispered to me with a shrug. "I wonder who's paying?"

For awhile, I just stood where I was, watching scantily clad cartoon characters walking around, serving drinks, or swinging on poles near the staircases.

But then I felt Sneezer tugging me onward, and I was being pulled to an empty booth near a stage at the end of the room.

I gawked at the faces I saw at the surrounding tables. Skeletor, Merman, slavemasters and Orcs from _Dungeons and Dragons_, Moblins from the _Legend of Zelda_, _Planet of the Apes_ gorillas, and dozens of ducks, Ewoks, wolves and cats.

Slimer from the Real Ghostbusters snatched drinks off people's tables, pouring liquids down his throat.

My booth was situated between Count Chocula and Fritz the Cat.

Directly ahead of me, on a stage surrounded by mirrors, a pair of Persian cats with shapely female figures danced on either side of a pantless female skunk with glasses and a blue shirt, who was busy riding a pole on the center runway.

Sabrina Skunk.

From an internet comic.

I felt embarrassed to even recognize her.

..and her stripey tiger companion serving drinks.

Okay, so maybe I _did_ occasionally view cartoons after age twelve.

One of the Persians sidled off into the crowd, and the indecently attired chick from _Ghost in the Shell_ took center stage.

I watched her dance, hypnotized by the movements of her naked legs and strangely uniformed upper torso, all the while wondering if piloting a robot really requires you to not wear pants.

A purple skunk blocked my view of the stage.

Fifi Le Pew. Strip club drink server.

"A drink for you, monsieur?"

I frowned at her in annoyance, not only of obstructing my view, but also in recognition of the fickle nature of cartoon drinks.

If I asked for anything with a funny name, I would probably regret it. Bloody Mary, for example.

"Pina colada," I said.

Try to make fun of that one! I thought.

"A what?" she said, looking baffled.

Dirty Shirley. Out. Mudslide. Out. Boiler Maker. Definitely out.

Giving up, I said, "I'll have a beer."

As she wrote the order down, I quickly blurted, "And a hat suspended in purple liquid."

She gave me a dirty look, but scribbled the order down.

Fifi's not getting a tip, I thought.

I reconsidered when she came back a couple seconds later with the beer...and the hat suspended in purple liquid.

When she left the table, I dumped the liquid out, because I didn't know what it was.

The beer tasted like tea. I wasn't sure if it really was tea in a beer bottle or if Cool World didn't actually have beer.

The music changed to _Brown Sugar_ by the Rolling Stones, and the dancers left the stage.

A curtain came down, and when it came back up, there were a pair of cardboard mausoleums on the stage, from behind which a young woman stepped out, to the tune of Jim Towel's _I've Been Hoodooed_.

She was the most gorgeous woman I'd ever laid eyes upon.

Noid.

Not animated.

A _human_ woman. Clad in an appropriately Voodoo-esque black robe patterned with skulls, bones, snakes and arcane symbols. A skull half mask concealed part of her face, but the part I could see looked nice.

She danced rhythmically along the runway, accompanied by dancing skeletons from some old Terry Toon program or another.

She spun around, and as she did so, I momentarily caught a flicker out of the corner of my eye.

Glancing that way, I noticed that the flicker came from the mirrors.

It was a cartoon female, same general body shape as the dancer, clad in the same robe, which she slowly unbuttoned and discarded to the rhythm.

I looked away from the mirrors and saw the real woman, clad in a tight pink blouse and black leather miniskirt.

She spun around a pole in a sexually suggestive way, then threw her blouse to a drooling wolf.

In her form fitting leather bra, she straddled a pole, slid to the stage floor, then disappeared behind a cardboard mausoleum.

A pair of dainty cartoon hands held up an ink and paint miniskirt, and the doodle from the mirror stepped out, prancing suggestively up the runway, clad in a thong.

And then she was on one of the tables, crouching on all fours.

A cartoon Baron Sembedi, Morticia, and Dracula from, I believe, _Goolies Get Together,_ pulled up the table cloth around her, and when it came down, she was gone.

Before I could adequately prepare myself, I see the flesh and blood woman climbing out from beneath the table cloth in front of me, right between my legs.

She pressed me flat against the booth, straddling my lap as she unbuttoned my shirt to the music.

I stared uncomfortably at her heaving breasts as she simulated intercourse upon my pants, her leather thong creaking as it rubbed back and forth.

Her lips came close to my face, our lips almost touching.

And then she blew me a kiss.

It was weird. Her lipstick popped off, flapped through the space between our lips, and smacked mine.

The song ended, and she disappeared beneath the table again.

The cartoon woman popped out on the opposite side, giving me a mischievous wink.


	16. Chapter 16: Chad Buckthorn

When I woke up from my faint, I was _backstage_.

Actually, my crotch woke up before the rest of me, because, you know, _the patch_.

After _slapping my beaver_ a few times, it at last behaved, and I became totally embarrassed, because people were looking at me.

I was in a dressing room. It looked kind of like the dressing rooms they show in cartoons about movie stars, you know, the makeup table with the lighted mirrors, the dressing screens, and racks full of costumes. Of course, there were instruments in cases as well, due to it being a music venue.

The whole Kidd Video band was there, gawking at me.

Okay, not Carla, because she was doing her makeup, but the curly haired guy and Kid Vid, and _Wiz_...I wanted to faint again.

Their little pixie friend was apparently still part of the band. The sprite, clad in a bikini, headband and leggings, brought me some kind of fizzy drink, I guess to revive me from my fainting spells. I still think she looks like Tinkerbell's personal trainer.

I drank the stuff, which pretty much tasted like Alka Seltzer, staring up at the faces I grew up with.

"You're Kidd Video!" I cried. "You're really real!"

"Why wouldn't we be?" Kidd Video asked.

"I don't know," I said. "Is it true that you used to be real human beings, before Master Blaster captured you?"

The band members looked at each other, then nodded.

"We crossed over in the eighties," Wiz said. "It was just as well since I was still being typecast for _The Brady Bunch_."

"How did he do it?" I asked. "I mean, Master Blaster."

"Whoa," said Ash, holding up his hands defensively. "Once you go down that path, there's no coming back."

"It's not all it's cracked up to be," said Wiz. "There's a tremendous loss of sensation. It's not nearly as wonderful as you think."

"All right," I giggled. "But I just want to say that _you're_ wonderful." Then, not wanting to offend, I added, "_You're all_ wonderful. I always loved your show."

Wiz smiled and rubbed his head. "Wish I had, I mean, _we had_ more fans like you _back in the day_."

"Is she awake?" came a voice from the door.

When I saw who was stepping in, I blushed hotly, reaching into the rack for something to wear.

I pulled out a gorilla suit. I put it back.

I tried again, and found myself holding a bulky astronaut suit.

My third hasty pick was a sort of Vampirella style cape, with a high Dracula collar and a skull shaped brooch that you pinned at the neck.

It would have to do.

Feeling extremely self conscious, I wrapped this cloak around myself, trying to ignore the Valentine hearts bubbling up as he approached me.

Seeing me holding the cape closed with my hands, he brushed them aside.

"It's perfect," he breathed as he watched the cape fall around my shoulders.

The hearts exploded from the cape's interior like a cloud of butterflies. I was beyond ashamed.

"I'm practically naked," I said in barely a whisper.

In more ways than one, I thought.

"It's okay," he said. "This isn't the noid world. This is Cool World."

I swallowed hard.

He was right.

He was _so_ right.

Comic book characters always run around in their underwear and nobody ever thinks twice about it, or even mentions it.

Still, I only gave him the slightest of nods.

I parted my lips, to whimper out a weak protest, but he pressed them together with a finger. "Shhh. Just relax, and be who you want to be."

Who I want to be?

I could be Holli Would, I thought.

Do I dare?

I trembled as he ran his fingers through my hair.

He took my hand, lifting it up, caressing the back part, massaging my wrist.

He did it in such a way that made me imagine him massaging _other things_, but I forced a placid smile.

"Just remember where you are..." he said, curling my hand around, bringing it up to his muzzle. "And who you are...and _be yourself_."

I felt ready to faint again, and that little heart factory was still pumping out Valentines.

I forgot all about Drew.

I swear I heard _Enjoy the Silence_ by Depeche Mode playing in the background, perfectly on cue, like I was in a romance movie, and we'd just arrived at the mushy part.

"I must be _so_ transparent," I said in a small voice I doubted he would hear.

He put an arm around my shoulders, and in that sexy voice, said, "If you are transparent, it is because you are a _beautiful prism_, through which plain ordinary light can emerge in a million dazzling colors."

I suddenly noticed his band staring at me.

Be myself, I thought.

And so I scowled at my onlookers, responding with an indignant "What."

There, I thought. That's exactly how Holli would react.

Well, not exactly. But it's a start.

I want to be like Holli.

Oh, but I hope I didn't offend them! They were my favorite cartoon characters!

"You can ignore them," he whispered. "It's okay."

I nodded, slowly gaining confidence.

With myself.

With my body.

With _him_.

Okay, _maybe not with_ _him_.

_Not yet_, at least.

"My name is Chad Buckthorn," he said, kissing my hand. "And what shall I call you, mysterious flower from another world?"

I told him my name.

"Ah yes," he said, kissing a higher spot on my hand. "It is poetry in my mouth, and soothing to my fiery tongue."

He kissed my wrist, and for a moment I wondered if he intended to do that kissing gag they always did on _The Addams Family_.

I reflected that I _wouldn't mind_ him kissing me all the way up my arm, _and elsewhere_, but I couldn't bring myself to say it.

"Where are my manners?" he said, again capturing me with that single brown eye that sparkled like a jewel. "We are far too close together without preamble. Let us go out together, so we can be..._properly introduced_."

"A date?" I stammered nervously.

He nodded. "Do you like ice cream?"

"Do I ever!" I cried, but then felt really embarrassed at how loudly I said it.

"It's a date, then. And shall we go somewhere beforehand? Say, possibly the museum?"

Trembling with nervous anticipation, my voice came out in a shrew-like squeal. "That sounds great."

Stupid corn dog.

Okay, so I'm not Holli Would.

Not yet, at least.


	17. Chapter 17: Amanda Bunny

When the cartoon stripper winked at me, she gave me a look as if...as if maybe she was the same person as the human.

I dismissed it as stage trickery, and cartoon stage trickery at that.

My mouth hung open as I watched the black haired beauty climb back up on stage.

My heart was beating out of my chest-literally.

A Valentine heart, just like _The Mask_. I guess it was a feature of the tux.

When my heart hit them, the Car-X birds, who had been hiding in my breast pocket, burst out in a frantic cloud of feathers, similar to what they do in the commercials.

They had been playing techno music while she sidled off to dance on one of the poles, but that soundtrack changed to _Solsbury Hill_ by Peter Gabriel as I watched her.

Everyone was staring at me in annoyance.

The dancer froze, then giggled at me.

I covered my heart, pressing it back down, embarrassed.

I noticed, off to the side, there was a deejay booth, manned by Elmer Fudd dressed as Cupid. A black cat popped up behind him, knocked him sideways with a mallet, then switched the record on the turntable with techno music.

When my heart threatened to burst out again, I held it in. Easy enough matter for me, since I always keep my feelings bottled up anyway.

The girl slipped behind a mausoleum, and the curtains fell.

When they came back up, there were pagodas on stage, and a pair of Anime girls in kimonos with braided hair dancing to Kyoto music, that changed to something electronic with a beat when they stripped to schoolgirl outfits, then _less_.

I watched for a few minutes, but couldn't sustain an interest. Not after that lap dance.

No, I only wanted _her_.

"You gonna _do_ the Voodoo girl?" Sneezer whispered to me.

"The idea _has_ crossed my mind," I muttered back.

He handed me a plastic badge on a lanyard that said `Backstage Pass.' "I found it inside a napkin."

I slung the badge around my neck and stood up. "Now we just need to find the back stage."

"We haven't paid for our drinks yet," Sneezer said.

I shrugged. "Okay. Then take care of it. You got the cash..."

Sneezer whistled, and Fifi appeared at our table in a second. "Monsieur?"

"How much for the drinks?" I asked.

"Monsieur's money is not required. Monsieur can thank the gentleman at the next table."

She pointed to the mustached cat in pinstripes seated next to a weasel and a Claw henchman.

When I made eye contact with the cat, he gave me the sort of look The Godfather gives when someone makes really good business for the mob. Kind of a condescending, wary smirk that seemed to say, "You are a very good tool."

I smiled with unease. Whatever I had helped him with, whatever I had done to earn his favor, I didn't want to know.

"Hey! Down in front!" A buzzard yelled at me. His companion, Leisure Suit Larry, didn't seem too thrilled, either.

I raised my hands defensively. "Sorry. This is me going, all right?"

I tapped Sneezer on the shoulder. "Leave a tip."

"I don't have a pencil," he said.

"Why do you need a pencil?"

"I'm going to write `don't take any wooden nickels' on a napkin."

I shook my head. "C'mon. Put a buck on the table so we can leave. We're bothering Mr. Buzzard."

"Okay," said Sneezer. "You asked for it."

He took a giant green deer out of his suit, demolishing the table as he set it down.

I thought the skunk would get upset, but she put a leash around it and said, "Merci boucoup," leading it away.

"I'm glad I didn't ask you to give her a five," I groaned.

"You're right," he said. "It takes two to slap hands."

"Buddy," the buzzard said, poking its face into mine, his long neck allowing him to remain seated while doing so. "You're blocking my view. I'm not going to ask you again."

"Hey look," I said, pointing to a random spot behind him. "A dead body!"

The buzzard's head spun around to look. "Where!"

As I quickly slipped away from the demolished table, I came to a sickening realization that there actually _was_ a dead body where I pointed. I could just barely make out the little brown Hawaiian shirt with the brown legs poking out.

"So, where's the backstage?" I asked, trying not to think about the crime.

"In the back," Sneezer said.

I smacked my face.

"If monsieur is looking for le back stage," our waitress said behind me. "He should walk this way..."

The skunk cut between the tables, swishing and swinging her hips.

As expected, Sneezer copied her movements, but I preferred not to do the same.

"Tell me," I asked her as we walked. "What's the name of the noid chick?"

"Monsieur is referring to Mademoiselle Amanda Bunny."

"Really?" I said. "She looks...different."

"She _does that_, monsieur. Madame changes her hair and dyes it, she puts on disguises. It gives her a certain, how you say, _mystique_, no?"

I swallowed. "Yeah. It does."

We reached the end of the room, stepping into a narrow hallway.

Lucky for me, acting girly was not a requirement for getting backstage.

It was a concrete corridor, decorated with framed pictures of strippers, who danced suggestively when I examined them.

They ranged from Anime style to Betty Boop.

As I turned a corner, staring at a row of dressing room doors marked with giant stars, I bumped into a red haired figure dressed in a blue top and black skirt.

"Vanessa?" I said.

"Eeep!" she cried, her cat's ears popping out in surprise.

She had been carrying two beers on a tray, which, during this chance encounter, I had managed to knock over and spill.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I keep doing that. I didn't mean-"

"It's okay," she said.

"It doesn't look okay," I said. "I'd like to help. You got any towels?"

She shook her head, pulling a wooly mammoth vacuum cleaner out of her skirt pocket.

I chuckled. "Hammer Space."

"Yeah," she said, sopping up the mess with the creature's trunk. "It can be handy some times."

"Has anyone ever explored it? Hammer Space, I mean?"

"I think if you try, you end up beneath the laundromat. Or Snoopy's Doghouse."

"So what are _you_ doing here?" I asked.

"I was about to ask you the same question! What are you doing in this sleazy joint?"

"Holli sent me here. Said there was something here that would `blow my mind.' How about you?"

"I work here," she said. "So was your mind blown?"

I swallowed. "_I'd say so_. Before I came in here, I thought my ex-girlfriend was the only noid in town."

She suddenly looked depressed. "You like her, don't you?"

I gave her an apologetic frown. "I'm sorry. You're...wonderful. Really, you are. But, well, you're a _cartoon_, and there are rules against us..._being together_. I should be with my own kind."

For a moment, a black box appeared on her chest, revealing a Valentine's heart. It thudded a few times, then shattered.

The box vanished, and tears rolled down her cheeks.

"Aww!" I cried. "Don't be like that! We can still be friends!"

I put a hand on her shoulder. "Besides. I'm only going to talk to her. Who's to say she'll even want anything to do with me?"

Her lips trembled. She brushed my hand away. "Of course..._she'll_ want something to do with you! You're the only human, _she's_ seen for years! She's been waiting all her life for someone like you!"

"Really?" I said. But then I noticed her crestfallen expression. "C'mon. We can still hang out. Maybe I'll even...find you a boyfriend that's as sweet and intelligent as you."

"I don't want another boyfriend!" she sobbed. "I want you!"

Before I could say a word in protest, she ran into one of the dressing rooms and slammed the door shut.

I tried to follow, but found the door was only a painting, and I couldn't open it.

The mammoth trumpeted at me indignantly.

I sighed in frustration, thinking that this was probably for the best. At least in a cartoon, suicide is pretty much impossible.

Okay, so maybe it could happen in a _serious_ _cartoon_, and Dale wasn't looking so good back behind Mr. Buzzard, but I didn't want to think about that.

I knocked on the dressing room door labeled Amanda Bunny, and Cleo answered. Behind her, I could see a dressing room, with a row of makeup stations with lighted mirrors, dressing screens, and closets full of burlesque outfits, featuring sequins, feathers and frills.

I had to look down to make eye contact with the feline.

The narrow white creature had a martini in one paw, which she sipped before speaking to me. "Can I help you?"

"I'd like to speak to Amanda Bunny."

She rolled her eyes. "Which one? Amanda M or Amanda K?"

I furrowed my brow in puzzlement. "They have the same name?"

She nodded. "We use their initials to avoid confusion. K or M?"

I rubbed my face. "Whichever one is the noid."

She turned and yelled into the room. "Kate!"

Throughout the course of this conversation, my brain had unconsciously been in middle school mode, my eyes tracing a line from her legwarmers to her hips, wandering to other places...

"Didn't you get enough of that when I was up in the cage?"

I forced my eyes upward, to her giant yellow-orange hairdo. "Sorry," I stammered. "I..."

She threw her martini in my face. "Take a picture. It'll last longer." And she stomped out.

When I returned my attention to the dressing room, I gawked open mouthed at what I saw.

From behind a dressing screen appeared a real life human version of the Amanda I knew from the comics, in all her gorgeous glory.

Shining hazel eyes, golden hair done up in a pair of long pigtails. Her chin was round, her ears large, her nose bulbous but attractively so. Those deep set eyes and that face set off something within me, something I couldn't quite describe. Something...not immediately identifiable with sex, but just as captivating.

And _that outfit_.

Just like on the comics, she had on a lot of blue-gray suit made of padded rubber.

Around her head, she wore a pair of glistening rubber rabbit ears.

Her top, made of that same material, came all the way up to her chin, but a heart shaped section lay open at the chest, exposing her cleavage. It had short princess sleeves, and the bottom portion stopped above her waist, showcasing a shiny blue-gray thong.

Garters hidden somewhere under the top supported a pair of mid-thigh length high heeled boots of the same color.

"I heard you had a thing for noids," she said in a sultry voice.


	18. Chapter 18: Dirty Dancing

They still have the van.

In the Kidd Video cartoon, the band always traveled in sort of a floating yellow bus thing, and this they had parked out behind the Cat Flap.

I was all excited about riding in it, but Mr. Buckthorn had a slightly more romantic idea: The souped up car from _Cadillacs and Dinosaurs_.

As we drove through a loop of generic cartoon backgrounds, we got to know each other a little better.

Well, at least, he got to know _me_ better.

I ended up telling him several things about myself before we arrived in front of that gallery, but I only learned a couple things about him.

When he was an infant, he was abandoned by his parents, left on the doorstep of an obscure character from _Apartment 3G_, who raised him in secret, and now he owns a number of businesses. That's all I found out.

He, on the other hand, had the entire story of my pitiful art career. How I took four years of college to get a useless piece of paper that says I'm artist. How I worked full time at Home Depot and spent the rest of the time struggling to keep my little graphic design company afloat, and it was a thousand dollars in debt.

He didn't share much, but I'm not complaining. I love a good listener.

The gallery was...ridiculous.

One whole section was devoted to silly versions of famous paintings, like a version of _Whistler's Mother_ where the woman rocks back and forth in her chair..._whistling_, and a replica of the Sistine Chapel ceiling the Animaniacs painted with Spielberg as God. No, I didn't make that up.

There was an _American Gothic_ painting where you could stand in place of the old farmers, and stick your head in the _Mona Lisa_.

Another section, entitled "Contrasts" consisted of oversimplified background art, to provide good contrast for the doodles that stood in front of them.

Sculptures were a little more interesting, for I guess in comics and cartoons, they have greater presence. I noted, with some amusement, they even had that marble reclining nude from the _Maniac Mansion_ video game.

I had to be careful around any statue with a bow and arrow. A statue of Cupid shot me, and now I think there's no escape from this attraction I have for Chad.

They _did_ have a lot of abstract art in there, but I still liked it.

A couple times, Beaver got a little...unruly, but I stepped in the bathroom and scolded it until it behaved.

The best exhibit, by far, was the landscape section.

_You can actually go inside the paintings!_

I know, kind of weird going inside a piece of art when I'm essentially inside one already, but how could I disagree with Prince Charming?

We must have spent hours just wandering and exploring places. We opened doors in Thomas Kinkaide villages and tracked snow on the carpets, peered through the telescope on a schooner, explored a cave. Best. Museum. Ever.

So anyway, _awesome_ gallery. We'd walk side by side on a beach inside a painting, holding hands, ride horses...

As we sat together on a park bench inside that famous Seurat painting of the people in the park, I leaned on Chad's shoulder and said, "I'm the artist that drew you."

"I know," he said, wrapping an arm around me. "You have exquisite taste. My deepest and sincere thanks."

I chuckled softly, pressing my body against him, enjoying the closeness.

"So..." I purred. "Ice cream?"

He chuckled. "What, and miss this lovely view?"

I punched him softly.

"Have you been to Hoofnagel's?"

"No," I said. "But it sounds cute."

And so we got back in his nice car and drove to a little fifties style soda shop, one with a strange looking Model T parked out front.

The first thing I blurted when I came in was, "Oh my God."

_The Get-Along-Gang_. Right there at the counter.

And then I see _Drew_, dressed like some kind of cartoon exterminator.

Apparently he was on a _date_. He was so involved that he didn't even notice me come in.

Some little redhead, probably from _The Archies_ or some Hanna Barbara cartoon.

I covered my mouth to stifle a giggle, gesturing for Chad to join me in a corner booth.

We quietly ordered shakes, and our server, Mr. Hoofnagel himself (I hardly even remembered that guy being in the cartoon, it's been so long) disappeared behind the counter.

Okay, so this is where I get out my phone and start typing really, really fast.

Some of what you've read earlier was actually written in the museum, or in the Cat Flap, but this is the first time I really stopped and assembled all my thoughts together.

Upon catching me writing, Mr. Stud Muffin asks me, "What are you doing with that small device, sweet flower blossom?"

I chuckled and told him. "I'm documenting everything I can observe in this unusual and interesting world."

"Have you been documenting anything about me?"

"Naturally," I said with a grin. "In fact, once I get home, I will devote an entire chapter to you in the book I will publish."

"I am honored," he said.

The shakes arrived.

Judging by what happened in the bar earlier, I half expected the soda goat to grab us and give us a good jostling, but instead he comes out with actual _shake shakes_.

For a moment, as I'm sipping, I glance at Drew in amusement, maybe some worriment. You know, like I somehow thought him pathetic for dating a cartoon when there I was dating one myself.

But then Chad grabs my chin, gently directing my gaze to him.

I didn't bother looking at Drew anymore.

We held hands.

We kissed.

Faith Hill was playing in the background, and that suited me just fine.

"Do you like dancing?" Chad asked.

I stared at him. "I..."

Me? To be honest? Not a great dancer. But when I opened my mouth, I found myself saying, "Yes. I'd love to."

I'm sure, all throughout this exchange, Drew must have glanced my way a few times, but my back had mostly been facing him, we sat behind the soda machine, and I had that cape on. I suppose, if he had really fallen for that toon girl the way I fell for Chad, he probably thought I wasn't there.

Oh, and maybe using the back hallway to get to the ladies' restroom didn't help matters.

I thought I was just being polite. You know, not interfering with Drew's love life.

Anyways, we left our booth, and Chad took me by the hand, leading me out to the car.

"If it pleases you," he said as he started up the engine. "We will dance at the Savoy."

I thought to myself, _anything_ we do together would please me, but I instead told him, "I'm _sure_ it will be _wonderful_!"

"I regret to inform you that there is a dress code," he said. "But I have a _solution_ to that."

We drove up the street to a department store in between a chocolatier and a place selling magic rugs...and, ironically, a store called `Magic Rugs' that sold bizarre toupees.

The department store had suits and dresses. Nice looking ones. I examined several, but I kept getting distracted by watching strange creatures fitting various doodles with...their duds.

The staff included a spider, who was _an orb weaver_, no less, that wove suits around you, Yakko and Wakko Warner from the Animaniacs, who stretched a suit to fit a person of any size, and the Hedgehog Sisters from Animal Crossing.

To my surprise, and embarrassment, I found Chad leading me up to the fairy godmother from _Cinderella_.

The cheery old overweight gnome instructed me to remove my cape, and she waved a wand around me, forming a sparkly dark outfit over my underwear.

It appeared to be some kind of princess outfit, complete with crown, but the crown was a little uncomfortable, so I gave it back.

It had a slit up the side, and a plunging neckline, but I _supposed_ it was a _little better_ than my previous semi unclothed state.

It was translucent. If you didn't look too close, I suppose it looked like a regular black dress, but you could still see the major seams and outlines of my lingerie if you looked closely enough.

In fact, the outfit kinda felt like I wasn't wearing anything. I mean, I could feel it on my skin, but it was incredibly light, like someone decided to make clothing out of lotion.

But still, when I looked at myself in the mirror, I thought I looked stunning, like someone from the Academy Awards.

"You look terrific," he breathed over my shoulder.

"Are you sure this is dress code appropriate?"

"You have nothing to worry about," he said, patting me lightly on the butt.

"Just make sure you don't wear it after midnight," the old gnome admonished. "It has an automatic return function."

I stared at her. "You're kidding."

But Chad leaned close to me and whispered, "Do you really want to wear it any longer than that?"

I swallowed. "I...don't know." I smoothed the material over my legs. "Maybe?"

He pressed himself against me, nuzzling his muzzle into my ear. "Will you be unhappy if it _vanishes_ at midnight?"

My voice came out in a tiny squeak. "No?"

He responded with a rumbly purring sound, then stepped away from me for a moment, to get fitted with a new suit coat.

A brown hedgehog helped the orb weaver get in place, and in seconds he was wearing one of a perfect size.

He slung my cape over his arm, paid one of the hedgehogs, and led me back to our ride.

The Savoy is a classy joint.

It's a restaurant and dance hall.

There are fountains, statues and plants everywhere.

Near the entrance we had a giant statue of Atlas holding up the world, there was a faun, a centaur, and a large fountain featuring flying cherubs and dragons.

The floor had beautifully patterned carpeting, the chandeliers were brilliant, and there was a big band.

The crowd was interesting. I saw characters from _Richie Rich_, Scrooge McDuck made an appearance, and even some snooty looking rich people ghosts and extras from one of those _Ghostbusters_ cartoons. Anything from the animated upper crust.

When Sinatra's _Fly Me to the Moon_ started playing, Chad grabbed my hands, leading me, dancing, past Mr. Burns and a suited robot, to the middle of the floor.

At first, I giggled as I stared at all the cartoon characters trying to look all serious as they danced with each other, but as I put my hands on Chad's waist and tried not to step on his big feet, staring into his good eye, I serioused up myself. So much so that I bumped into the pirate-like Captain Haddock (Tintin character), and his large bosomed opera singer girlfriend. Princess Toadstool wasn't too happy with me, either.

I learned close to Chad as we waltzed back and forth before the band.

"Can I asked you something?" I asked.

He grunted like a horse and nodded.

"Your eye," I said. "What happened to it?"

His eye did that wiggly sparkle thing cartoons always have when they're about to have a flashback. "I was in a knife fight with the leader of a rival gang," he whispered. "His name was Red Rooster, head of the _Rojas Reyes_, the Red Kings."

I grinned. "So you're a singing gangster."

He gave his head a violent shake. "That life is behind me now. Now I fight under only one banner..."

He raised his fist dramatically. "Love."

His fist relaxed.

It's corny, but hearts were still popping out of my clothes.

On impulse, I grabbed his eyepatch, lifting it up to look underneath.

As always in cartoons, the scar was an unrealistically tidy looking diagonal slash. He still had an eye, but it was a solid white, with stitches running across it. I felt sorry for him, but it didn't shock or scare me at all.

I pressed the patch back in place.

"You are not horrified," he said with some surprise.

"When it happens to noids, it's a lot more gross."

"You still find me handsome?"

"Oh yes," I said. "Definitely."

The band started playing George Michael.

As we danced, out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw a flash, like someone had a camera, taking pictures of us, but I ignored it.

"Oh lovely flower," my date breathed. "May I drink from the nectar of your perfectly shaped lips?"

More hearts popped out of my clothes, rising like balloons. I think some of them even gave the other dancers a flash of thigh, maybe even my posterior once or twice.

"Only if I can taste yours," I replied.

And so we _drank each other_.

_Deeply_.

I guess I was thirstier than I thought.

He grabbed my butt, but that was okay. I _wanted_ him to.

I thought of him doing stuff like that to me, when I was drawing him.

Alone.

In a suite at the Union Plaza.

With my pants off.

Artist's easel propped between my spread legs.

When our lips broke apart, he leaned close to me and whispered, "How does this sound, my flower? We dine on the choicest of foods, by candle light, over which you make a decision about whether or not you wish to join me in my chambers this evening."

I giggled nervously. "You really don't mess around, do you?"

Looking super serious, he said, "No."

I giggled some more.

But then I stopped, getting a little worried. "Where I come from, the lady doesn't join a man in his chambers on the first date."

"This isn't where you came from," he said. "You came to me in your underwear."

I swallowed hard.

"You can decide over our meal," he repeated. "It is fair, no?"

I suddenly felt very hot and uncomfortable. "Yes."

"Then I will show you to your table."

He tugged me by the hand, leading me away from the dance floor.

To dinner.

Where I'd _decide_.


	19. Chapter 19: A Thing For Noids

"Wow," the word came out of my mouth as incoherent noise as I stared at this erotic fantasy turned real.

Flesh and blood human in an Amanda Bunny costume.

Same woman that was on stage. I could tell by the general shape of the face, the breasts, and the legs. Plus it seemed pretty unlikely that there would be tons of noid women lurking about in the same area when I hadn't seen any at all for most of the day.

To be honest, despite how much all those animated females may have turned my head, I really wanted _this_. _From the start_. A _real woman_.

"Hi," I stammered. "_Voodoo woman_, right? I, uh...liked your show."

"_I thought you did_," she said with a smirk. "There was a heart popping out of your shirt, and music and everything."

I paled. "It's not like that. I don't _like_ doodles like that. I...you know, males and their subconscious minds. I'm an adult. I really much prefer human beings to cartoons."

"It's okay," she said. "I _meant_ to confuse you. Sexually. It's part of the show."

She put her hands on my shoulders, smoothing my cartoon suit. "I'm not offended at all."

Again I heard Peter Gabriel singing "My heart is going boom boom boom" as a cartoon heart exploded from my suit. I clamped a hand over my chest to hold it down, but it only made little hearts bubble out.

She covered her mouth to suppress a giggle.

"You changed your hair," I said.

The woman nodded. "One advantage of living in an animated world is that you only need to step behind the right dressing screen to get a new look."

"Or a classic one," I muttered.

"Your father _did_ say I was in the new comics."

"You've met my father?"

She grimaced, saying nothing.

"That bad, huh?"

"He's, um, very difficult to get along with."

Noticing a neon pink flash out of the corner of my eye, I glanced at a nearby mirror, but she threw a blanket over it. A cloud of dust puffed out.

Behind me, I could hear Sneezer making sniffling sounds.

"Please don't," I cried. "Please, Sneezer?"

"Sorry," the mouse said in between sniffles. "It's just," the sneeze kept building up. "It's just...I'm allergic...I'm allergic to..."

"Out," the woman barked.

Sneezer just inhaled again. "Dus-"

"Out!" the woman yelled. "You're not doing that here! You'll make a mess!"

And she dragged him out into the hallway by the ear, slamming the door.

A second later, I hear something explode, several somethings breaking and shattering, and then a "Bless me."

The woman gave me an apologetic smile. "_Doodles_," she said. "You are _so_ lucky. I'd _kill_ for a single, normal utterly boring day in your world."

That explains what she sees in me, I thought. "Then I'm sure you'll love it when I sit down with your tax paperwork and E-File your 1040."

She laughed, then pointed to her arm. "See that? _Goosebumps_."

I suddenly noticed vaporous entities floating through the room. Ghosts, skulls, a mouse in a martini glass.

I supposed their random nature was why they were called `doodles', but I hoped for a better explanation. I pointed to a floating sunglass wearing chihuahua head. "What's all this?"

"There are other dimensional wavelengths besides Cool World," she said with a shrug. "Sometimes they cross over here."

Having nothing to say about that, I offered her a hand. "We, uh, haven't been formally introduced. I'm-"

She cut me off. "Drew Deebes. _I know._" She returned the handshake. "Kate Bunny."

I was staring. I forced my eyes to look up, admiring the golden bangs projecting from the headdress in a stylish wave. My suit was doing that super heartbeat thing again.

"Would you like me to do something about that?" she asked, poking the thudding heart.

"Uh..." I said. "Well...I mean, if you like it, it's fine, but..."

Without a word, she grabbed one of my coattails, twisting a button like it were some kind of knob.

All of a sudden, a red heart appeared on my lapel, glowing and pulsating like that blue thing that Tony Stark has in his chest on all those _Iron Man_ movies.

"Better?"

I wasn't sure if it was or not. Well, until she changed it to patterning the suit entirely with rainbow colored heart shaped polka dots. _Iron Man_ was more my style, so I told her to change it back.

I couldn't fix the Peter Gabriel thing, though.

"So," I said as my heart pulsated at a brighter intensity. "Important question. What are you doing here?"

Kate rolled her eyes. "You saw what I'm doing here. _Making you drool._"

I swallowed. "No, I mean, you're a noid. How did you get into this world of cartoons?"

She paused for a minute, biting her lip.

"I was b-" She stopped herself for some reason, giving me an embarrassed grin.

"Sorry," she said. "I was checking you out. _Completely_ forgot what I was saying. _Anyways_, it's been a long time since I've seen another noid my age. I was, _brought here. As a baby. _I don't know my parents. They abandoned me in a Disney theme park. behind one of their animation studios."

I could imagine it happening. Those places were _crowded_.

Moved by pity, then guilt, I focused on her face. "I'm sorry to hear that."

"It's okay," she said. "Some doodles came out of a mural, took me to live with Mrs. Honeybunn and her two daughters. I grew up with the girls, the Get Along Gang and the Care Bears until I started growing breasts." She shrugged. "Then I moved on."

"I think we have something in common," I said. "I was practically raised by the television."

She laughed.

"Mom was out a lot," I continued. "In between night shifts at the hospital and going to school, she was either sleeping or gone. I basically had to take care of myself."

She looked at me with an expression of sympathy, smirking a little. Not a sexy moment, but a very real and meaningful one, nonetheless.

"So," I said, switching to what I hoped to be a lighter subject. "What's the deal between you and `M'? You two almost look identical, except she's animated."

"Um..." Again looking flustered, she stammered, "You're going to laugh, but it involves a mad scientist. _You know_ how this place is, right?"

Kate sighed. "After I grew breasts, I started hanging out in the X-Mansion." She rolled her eyes. "_X-Men_. Can't even take a nap without something blowing up. But I _loved_ those tights.

"It was only a matter of time before Apocalypse captured me and a pair of obscure mutants, attempting to extract our DNA to make a half human doodle super soldier.

"Cyclops and his buddies stopped his machine before she could be weaponized, but, well, I _suddenly had a new sister_."

I stared at her, unsure whether to be skeptical or suspend my disbelief and accept it as a true part of this crazy world.

"That's _weird_," I said. "But I guess anything's possible here..."

"_You have no idea._"

I swallowed hard, wondering what horrible things a cartoon mad scientist could do to _me_ if I kept hanging around Cool World.

I stared at the covered mirror. "What's with this?"

"What do you mean?" she said in a defensive tone.

"On stage, you choreographed it perfectly so that your sister shows up in the mirror when you pass it, so it looks like you, moves like you, acts like you, then I could almost swear that _you_ appeared in the mirror when _she_ passed _it_. And neither of you ever showed up on stage at the same exact time."

"It's an act," she sighed, uncovering the mirror.

Her cartoon reflection winked at me, unzipping a barely visible zipper on the front of her identical looking rabbit costume. When I looked back at Kate, her top was still zipped.

When I glanced at the reflection again, her cartoon self stuck out her tongue and stepped out of frame.

I watched with astonishment as the real girl touched a glass devoid of her reflection.

I could see my reflection just fine, but I couldn't see hers at all.

"This is insane," I said.

She stuck her hand through the glass, which rippled like water. "_I know._"

"Is that a trick mirror or something?" I asked. "Some kind of cartoon magic prop?"

"Yes," she said with a mysterious smile. "Want to go out?"

"What," I said. "Like, in the mirror?"

Kate chuckled a little. "No, silly. I meant, _do you want to go out on a date_."

I swallowed, my cartoon heart thudding. "Uh, sure!"

She started walking toward the door, her rubber outfit creaking with every step.

"You're going to wear _that_?" I asked.

Kate gave me a look that said, "Really?" And then verbally she said, "This is a comic, and _I'm a stripper. Of course I'm wearing this_."

"I'm not complaining," I said. "I just don't think I'll be doing much looking at your face."

And then I forced my eyes upward to illustrate my point.

Okay, so maybe it wasn't just an illustration.

"Maybe I don't want you looking at my face," she said.

"Why?" I asked. "You have a beautiful face."

She smiled a little. "You're sweet."

"So. I've never been in Cool World before. Where do you want to go?"

"How about the Land of Lost Stuff?" she said.

I sighed, thinking of Vanessa.

"What?"

"Nothing. It's just...I was dating a doodle, and, well..."

"You talked about going there with her," she finished.

I nodded. "I know. It's silly. You're real and she's not. Still, I feel a little guilty."

She snorted through her nose, covering her mouth. When she removed her hand, she said, "It's Vanessa Vixx, isn't it?"

"Yes. How did you know?"

Kate paused a minute before speaking. "We're _friends_."

I frowned. "I somehow doubt you'll be friends _after this_."

"You'd be surprised," she said with a grin. "_We share_."

My mouth suddenly felt dry. "You share boyfriends."

Kate nodded. "We share _everything_."

Blushing, I said, "I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that."

She took my hand, pressing it against her bare thigh. "_I'll make you comfortable._"

She let go and I withdrew my hand. "I..."

I stupidly wanted to apologize for touching her thigh, but then stopped myself. "We don't know the first thing about each other..."

I was about to say, "And I'm already touching your body," but she interrupted me.

"That's why we're going on a date. C'mon."

When she opened the door, I saw Cleo march up to her, muttering something in a low voice. It sounded like she was talking about Officer Harris.

Kate thanked Cleo and rubbed her head, sending her away.

"We'll have to use the secret exit," she muttered.

She led me by the hand to a cardboard couch, then pushed me onto it. Somehow it became a real leather loveseat.

To my alarm, I found her climbing on top of me, warming me with her body.

Okay, so it was maybe more like surprise than alarm, but I still felt it wasn't right.

"Wait," I cried. "We've just barely met!"

"I know," she said, pulling a lever.

And then the couch suddenly flipped upside down, and we were crashing down on a rubber mat inside an underground parking garage filled with weird and futuristic looking vehicles.

Most of them were hybrids, combinations of cars and airplanes or helicopters and cars, making me wonder if this were the MASK base until I saw the bird shaped bike from _Darkwing Duck_ and the talking car from the _Pole Position_ cartoon.

"Hi," Kate giggled as I lay atop her. "Mind getting up?"

"I might," I said with a smirk.

We got up, brushing ourselves off, and I followed her through the garage, staring at the various vehicles.

I saw a few of those cars that have eyes and talk, a Transformer or two, but they were all sleeping. There was also a suspicious version of the Scooby Doo bus with eyes, wrong looking flowers, and sixties style lettering that said `_Mastery Machine_.'

We arrived at a strange looking truck with a striking resemblance to the tank-ish thing from the B-movie _Space Hunter._

It had a pickup-like body, but there were sliding doors on the sides, and it had a ball turret with a machine gun up top, and a dome-like windshield with guns sticking out on the sides.

Kate pulled a key fob out of her top, making the vehicle chirp and open its sliding door.

A second later, Detective Harris walks out from behind the vehicle, regarding us smugly.

The spider joined him, aiming his gun at my new acquaintance.

Kate's ears, normally curved and bent at the tips, now stood ramrod straight. "Eeep!"

"Well well well," the cop said. "_Deebes and Bunny_. I never would have seen _that_ coming!"

He had this expression on his face like he knew something I didn't.

"What's wrong with that?" I asked.

Harris grinned like it was some kind of joke. "Nothing! More power to you! I'm just _surprised_, that's all."

"I told you," I said. "I'm not like my dad. I like real women."

He furrowed his brow. "All right, then. I'll let you off with a warning. But if I see you hanging out with a doodle, touching a doodle, or even thinking about doing a doodle, I'll make you regret it." Then he coughed. "FYI, Riffraff says _if you come within a foot of his girlfriend again, you're dead. _Let's just say I _will_ look the other way if that happens..._And_ probably laugh my ass off while doing so."

I stared at him in disbelief, both at how quickly the word got out about our little encounter, and how much a stink a cat with no visible genitalia was making over nothing.

Unless...

My vast mental warehouse of meaningless trivia pulled out an episode of Heathcliff where Cleo wanted Riffraff to `go steady', and by the end of the episode they mutually decided not to commit.

I shook my head. If she wants something, I thought, she can forget it. She can't hold a candle to Bunny.

Harris gestured to the spider, who holstered his gun.

"Oh, and Deebes?" he said. "One more thing."

He punched me in the face.


	20. Chapter 20: Deciding

I kept pinching myself to make sure this wasn't a dream...or a sexy nightmare.

Meekly, I followed Chad between a pair of hedges, and up a short staircase to a table with a fancy spread.

It was your stereotypical romantic dinner set up. Candles, wine, there was even a Mariachi band that jumped out of the bushes and played slow romantic music as soon as Chad pulled out a seat for me.

I seated myself, staring into Chad's eye as I listened to the music.

A waiter, a walrus in the style of Tennessee Tuxedo, brought out our food. Steaks, vegetables, shrimp. The stuff tasted strangely real, perhaps a side effect of being there too long, unless only the wealthy had access to real food or something.

Of course, the wine tasted like grape Fanta.

"So," I said as the music became muted. "_Chad_. Tell me more about yourself. Did you go to college?"

"Oh lovely nectarine," he said. "Colleges are a rarity in Cool World. If one wishes an advanced education, one simply studies at a different high school. I have two diplomas, one from Beverly Hills High, the other from Riverdale."

"Seriously?" I asked. "No colleges? How do you become a doctor here?"

"We take courses by mail."

I rolled my eyes. "Then what is Acme Looniversity?"

"A high school," he said.

I pondered this for a minute. "That actually explains a lot. Who was your favorite teacher?"

"My music teacher, Ms. Brahms. The woman was an _inspiration_. It's too bad she was a weredog. Also, I greatly admired Mr. Write, my English instructor, who built and sharpened my skills into hardened iron."

I suppressed a grin. I guess he didn't know how bad that sounded, but I really didn't care. In fact, the thought of something kinky going on with his teacher kind of turned me on.

"So...you and this English teacher...um..._how close_ were you?"

He shook his head and laughed. "Jessica. You are a wonderful enigma. _A Chinese puzzle_. You come to me like a chili pepper, we meet backstage, and you are like a delicate rose, and now, as I familiarize myself with your mind, I see that inwardly you are a ghost pepper. A spoonful of wasabi that burns the mouth."

Hearts popped out of my outfit.

Feeling my legs trembling, I scowled at my crotch. "Stop that!" I hissed.

"It wasn't me," the patch replied.

"Liar!" I said almost a little too loudly.

"It's _your body_," it growled. "I can't be blamed for everything."

"Drop some food in your lap, spicy flower?"

I suddenly felt incredibly hot, like every part of my body had decided to blush at the same time.

"Uh, _yeah_. I, uh, _dropped a carrot_."

"Do you often _talk to your food_?"

Blushing deeper, I shoved a piece of steak into my mouth, nodding. "You know, it _kinda does_ make my food taste better."

And then I pretended to scold the broccoli. "Be careful with that gas content! I have a very sensitive stomach!"

I laughed nervously.

"Your mind is like a succubus and a Disney princess living in the same house. When you lie, the succubus does not answer the door. It is an _endearing trait._"

I fanned myself. Before we started having this conversation, the room had been rather..._cool_.

"Do you have any Spanish blood?" I asked, mostly to change the subject.

"Perhaps," he said. "I do not know. As I said, I am an orphan."

"Tell me about this woman that adopted you..."

"_Sharona Buckthorn_? She is a _saint_. Despite her long hours of work as a successful fashion designer's assistant, and her long string of fiery romances, she always made time for me."

The music of the Mariachi band suddenly turned dramatic.

"Well, until Ceres Spencer cut the brakes on her car, landing her in a coma."

"I'm sorry," I said, though I thought it sounded like something from a soap opera.

Chad shrugged. "It is commonplace in that apartment complex. It is why I moved on, to see a better world, free from such tragic drama."

"But your mother, I mean, _Sharona_. do you still visit her in the hospital?"

Chad sighed and shook his head. "I was returning home after a particularly interesting gig in Gotham city, when I checked the hospital and found that someone had removed her life support and her body had already been taken away. The funeral was a closed casket."

He sniffed, wiping his eyes.

I decided he definitely was in one of those serious comics. At least, _in their background somewhere_.

"Cockroaches?" a voice said.

I looked down and saw the penguin from all those Bloom County comics holding up a plate of bugs.

I frowned. "I didn't order any roaches." I said.

He stared at his order sheet. "Sorry. Wrong table."

I watched him bring the tray to a pair of birds in dress clothes and rolled my eyes.

I turned my attention back to my date. "Do you have any _happy_ memories?"

He paused and said, "I enjoyed my childhood with the _Muppet Babies_, with whom Sharona acquainted me..." He rubbed his muzzle. "Oh, and I spent many pleasant hours with Rod Manley, her first love. He taught me to shoot pool, repair aircraft, and perform duties as a lifeguard."

With a faraway look, he added, "He taught me a lot of things. It is a shame that-"

"Stop," I interrupted, sure he was going to go into another soap opera tale. "_Focus on the happy_. What makes Chad happy?"

"_You_," he said.

"Besides that."

"Besides you? _Nothing_."

"Oh c'mon," I groaned. "There's got to be something that you really enjoy. Something that makes you cheerful, content, happy, even."

He opened his mouth.

"And don't say sex. _Something else. Anything_."

I saw a lump moving in his throat. "I..."

He shook his head. "No. I cannot tell you. You will think me less of a man."

I giggled. "I seriously doubt _that_!"

"Very well," he sighed. "I will tell you. I will whisper it in your ear."

He got up and did so. "When no one is looking, _I play with dolls_."

I had to fight down a laugh.

"I like to build and decorate their houses, and comb their pretty hair."

I forced down a grin. "That's...interesting."

"I knew it. You think less of me now."

"No, no," I said, openly grinning now. "It's very cute. You have to be very secure in your masculinity to admit something like that."

_He_ was blushing now. He was even having Valentine hearts. "I also like ballet. Is that bad?"

"No..." I said, fighting to keep my composure. "Okay, so..._ballet_?"

"I am not talking about watching. I have leotards."

I burst out laughing. "Are you _sure_ you like women?"

His little hearts dropped to the floor and shattered. If only all men were this easy to read!

"I like you, don't I?"

"I'm sorry," I blurted. "Really. I love a man in tights. It's _hot_."

_That_ made him feel better. "Maybe I show you _Swan Lake_."

I chuckled. "Okay!"

He returned to his seat.

We both had cartoon hearts now. One of the Mariachi guys stepped forward, singing _Love Lift Us Up Where We Belong_.

"In retrospect," Chad said. "We should have had spaghetti. We could share a noodle with our lips."

I leaned over the table and kissed him.

When we broke apart, he said, "So, have you decided?"

I giggled. "Only if I can see you in tights."

He grinned. "You are a cruel woman."

We got back in his car, and we were driving through a strange surreal landscape of dark twisting buildings.

For a few moments, I pondered the reasoning behind such unusual architecture, but then I remembered many cartoons with singing animated buildings that sort of twisted as they sang.

"Do you know anything about these buildings, Chad?" I asked.

He shook his head. "I am not an architect."

We passed through a gate that looked like a toothy mouth. I asked Chad about it.

"It is part of a highway beautification program," he said. "City ordinances tell builders to put artistic things on what they build."

"Is that why they're also twisted?"

"Yes." And then he said, "You are very inquisitive."

"I'm a researcher," I said. "A scientist."

"Do scientists often do work in their underwear?"

I swallowed. "Some do."

"Then Cool World is not so different from your world, after all."

I blushed.

We passed some sort of company or government building with stone lions out front, and then rolled to a stop in front of a strange looking skyscraper.

The building had two mallard duck sculptures framing its staircase, and a large eye decorating the door.

Chad shifted the car into park. "This is where I live," he said.

I stared at it uncomfortably. "It's...nice."

We climbed the front stairs. "Do many doodles live here?" I asked.

"A few." He led me inside.

The place looked like a mansion, with a statue and a twin staircase and a chandelier.

I followed him into an extravagantly decorated side room, where he introduced me to a pair of strangers, an alien named Miss Terious, and her butler, Sleezington. Apparently they're Chad's friends.

They were kind of weird. For some strange reason they had developed a new version of Chutes and Ladders that involves kinky sex games and whipping the other player with a cat-o-nine tails. I tried not to think about it. Much.

Me and Chad climbed a double staircase stepping into an elevator at the landing.

It was a plain gray and white elevator. Very clean and sterile looking.

There was an awkward silence as we watched the floor number change.

"So..." I said. "Do you just play that one club, or are there other spots you perform at?"

"We have gone on many tours," he said. "It has been a nice interesting time. Some bad things have happened, but I will take your advice and focus on the happy."

Silence.

"Do you know anything about a scientist named Heinreich Baubels?" I asked.

He gave me a suspicious look. "I...seem to remember something. But the memory, I am sorry to say, is not clear. Why do you ask?"

"Oh nothing," I said. "It's just...I'm something of a...a _student and historian_ of this place, and I read that he is responsible for the creation of the spikes of power."

"Hmmm..." he muttered. "I do not know. Perhaps we can speak to Vincent Whiskers about it tomorrow."

"Who's Vincent Whiskers?" I asked, but as he was opening his mouth to speak, I remembered what I saw in the comics. "He's the one who built the Cool World Planetary Defense Grid! Of course! Yes, I think we _should_ see him."

"But not tonight," he said. "You see, _we_, I mean, _the man_, _he goes to bed early_."

I giggled a little. "_I suppose he does._"

He was wagging his tail.

I don't know why I hadn't mentioned this much before. Maybe I was too embarrassed to admit that it turned me on, but he had a very nice thick kangaroo tail. One I was longing to stroke and grab, but was afraid to, thinking he'd in turn stroke and grab something on _me_. He was a little too forward as it was.

Still, whenever he appeared to be happy, that tail would wag back and forth, tempting me.

The tail stopped for a moment. "Jessica?" he asked.

He seldom used my name.

My heart pounded, cartoon hearts popping out of my outfit. "Yes?"

"What do you know about Jack Deebes and Holli Would?"

"Oh!" I laughed nervously, for I expected him to say something else. I'm not sure what I expected, but I thought it would be something more..._personal_.

"Uh..." I said. "Not nearly enough. I'm on a constant search for new information. Jack used to be my next door neighbor. I let him borrow my mom's car. I've read all his comics. About Holli and Slash and Bash..."

I shook my head. "I only saw Holli once. She was on the rooftop of the Union Plaza Hotel in Las Vegas. She, Jack and this other guy got in a fight. The guy fell off the building. I think they were fighting about the spike. It was the same time when all the world turned animated. I think the spike had something to do with it.

"It was the most fantastic thing I've ever experienced."

I'm pretty sure this response would have been more than sufficient to answer his question, but, damn it, I've been actively researching Cool World for at least a decade, and this was the first time I'd ever had an audience that took me seriously. So I gushed.

"I have sketchbooks filled with newspaper reports, blog posts, and interviews with the people around the hotel at the time of the incident. I've collected every scrap of Holli I could possibly find in the real world, documenting every detail.

"This blue teddy I'm wearing was actually taken from one of Holli's suitcases Jack's ex wife threw in the dumpster."

When I finished, Chad's mouth was hanging open, his tail doing little wags, and his eye...it had turned into a Valentine heart.

I giggled. "I take it you're impressed."

"Marry me," he said. "We will rule the world together."

I swallowed the lump that had suddenly formed in my throat. "Wow. This is a little..._sudden_, don't you think?"

"You already agreed to come to my private suite..."

I suddenly felt weak in the knees. I put my full weight on a railing.

"I have startled you," he said.

I nodded. "I need to think about this."

I looked into his eye. "Yes."

I blushed, shook my head. "I mean, _no_. I don't know. This is a lot to process. I'm sorry."

He chuckled softly. "We can discuss this over drinks, if that is acceptable to you."

I gave him a weak nod. "I still haven't seen you pirouette."

The elevator doors opened, and I was led into a white hallway lined with..._glass cases full of S&amp;M gear and medieval torture devices_.

It was like something out of _Fifty Shades of Gray_.

"Tell me something, lovely passion flower. Are you into bondage?"

Without thinking, I blurted "yes," but wasn't sure if it were in response to the S&amp;M or his marriage proposal.

My brain kicked in. "No, I mean, I don't know."

He laughed. "You must be more _decisive_. I love your shyness. It is refreshing, but you must not retreat from love, or it will retreat from _you_. You must be brave enough to be yourself. Tell, me sweet flower. Who are you?"

"I'm, I'm...I'm a scholar," I said. "A researcher historian."

"Is that what you want to be?" he said, tracing the shape of my face with his fingers.

"No," I squeaked.

"Then," he breathed with his muzzle inches from my face. "Who do you want to be?"

I swallowed. "Holli Would," I whispered.

"Louder," he growled.

"Holli Would," I said with a little more volume.

"Holli Would would never be this timid!" he cried. "Louder!"

"I want to be Holli Would!" I yelled, then covered my mouth in horror at what I said.

He pulled my hand away. "You desire a strange thing, but if that is _you_, you must own it. Let your petals unfold. Be what you desire."

I swallowed, giving him a slight nod. "Okay."

He frowned, as if that were the wrong answer, but didn't say so.

Instead, he said, "Again I ask you, are you into bondage?"

I just stared at him.

The elevator doors closed behind me.


	21. Chapter 21: Chips

The interior of Kate's Space Hunter-esque vehicle, being a cartoon prop, was bigger on the inside than the outside, and it looked like a strange combination between a bedroom and a SWAT tactical van.

Along the walls were computers, radar devices and video monitors. An arsenal of guns and science fiction weaponry hung on racks, but there was also a coffee maker, bookcases full of real looking books, a little spiral staircase, a queen sized bed, shower, and an aquarium.

The steering control looked like an alien deer, its antlers growing in a semi-rounded wheel. It was more like a yoke than an actual circle. I noticed quite few items on the dashboard were merely painted on, like the odometer.

I climbed in the front seat, staring at my surroundings. "This is nice," I said. "Do you live here?"

She laughed. "The amount of time I spend here, you'd think so, but no, I have an apartment."

There were books scattered everywhere. I picked one up and saw it was _Dune_. The cover looked identical to the one Vanessa had been reading. "Do you find a lot of duplicate stuff in this...place we're going to?"

"Oh?" Kate said. "That's Vanessa's. I was borrowing it from her."

"So you have a little book club going?" I said. "That's cute."

"Hello, Bunny," I heard a mechanical voice saying as a computerized equalizer on the dash measured the height of each inflection. It reminded me of that little screen inside Kit on _Knight Rider_.

"This is Drew," she said. "He's a friend."

"He _must be_, if he's going to ride around in your mobile bedroom."

"Chips, I'm a grown woman. _And_ I singlehandedly brought down a Sentinel. I can take care of myself. Especially around this guy."

"Don't get overconfident," it said.

She just shook her head.

Our six wheeled armored carrier rolled through the garage, passing more strange and fantastic vehicles.

The _Grape Ape_ van.

_Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch_. Or was it _Chopper and the Wheelie Bunch_? I could never get that straight.

We reached a ramp, passing through vaguely familiar streets.

"Is all that stuff in your comic book actually true?" I asked. "Did you actually fight Judge Myxo and Insectia and destroy the Atmos Terraformer?" Yes, I may have picked up an issue or two...and maybe read it cover to cover.

She smirked. "_I might have_."

"So you climbed up on that tower and everything?"

"It was kind of scary," she said. "But it had to be done."

She furrowed her brow. "By the way..." She pushed a button on my chair, and a holstered gun popped out of the side. "You may need this."

I frowned. "For what?"

Kate only shrugged.

I was staring at her outfit again. "Your costume looks real. Did you find that in the place we're going to, or are there regular clothing shops in Cool World?"

"Depending on the material," Kate said. "An animated piece can turn real if you wear it long enough, or if it's exposed to the wavelength of the real world for an extended period of time."

She tugged on her top. "I got this from an alien planet. They formed it around me using a special molding process."

"We should go into space some time," I said. "I mean, judging by the Scooby Doo room I went through, it seems rather easy to get to."

Kate nodded. "That would be fun."

Then she laughed, opening a glove box. "You just reminded me..."

She pulled out a pair of elbow length fingerless gloves the same material and color as her costume, sliding them on. "I forgot to accessorize."

I grinned. "I just thought something was missing from your costume. Of course, you look..._just as nice_ without them."

She snickered.

I suddenly noticed she had a fancy watch thing around her ankle. A watch that looked identical to the one I'd seen Vanessa wearing earlier that day.

"I didn't know you were diabetic," I said.

"What?" she said, confused.

"The watch on your ankle. It's like Vanessa's. She has diabetes."

Kate grinned. "That's not what it's for. Vanessa is such a bad liar. This..." She pointed to her ankle. "This is our superhero signal."

"So you and Vanessa have to run out somewhere and stop crime when you see that signal. Like when you had to fight that cyborg Brontosaurus."

"Bruce," she said with a nod. "Exactly."

"I figured that's what it was," I said. "The way she stood me up..."

She laughed. "You know, she _told me_ she _felt really bad about that_..."

"Do me a favor," I said. "If you're going to fight crime, tell me. You can take me along or make me stay at home, but I want to know what you're doing. Don't stand me up, okay?"

"It's only fair," she agreed.

Our vehicle passed a few more generic scenery changes, and suddenly we were rolling in front of a laundromat.

Okay, lame place for a date.

Yeah. I know. But well, _it was a weird laundromat_.

The front of the place was just your average concrete and glass store front. It had the company logo, a sock, with the name of the company next to it, and windows looking down on rows of washers and driers.

Kate stepped out of the vehicle, gesturing for me to do the same.

The moment I got out, she pushed a button on her key fob, and the entire vehicle folded down into a suitcase with the letters AB embossed on it, the B flipped backwards and pressed up against the A. It was like something from the _Jetsons_.

I followed her inside.

The interior was fairly realistic. I seldom see cartoons featuring a laundromat, so maybe that had something to do with it.

The patrons, at this point, were rather unsurprising to me. I saw quite a few superheroes washing their tights, or pretending to wash other types of clothing and secretly washing their tights, thinking no one was looking. I caught Generic Superman doing the latter.

A couple dogs were amusing themselves with shrunken clothing. Of course, now that I think of it, most cartoon animals tend to wear tiny shirts and no pants anyway, so maybe it's a style?

Of course there _had_ to be non-traditional uses of the machinery. Beavis and Butthead, for example, were using a machine to wash a dog. I've seen them do that before, but I suppose it doesn't take much to amuse them.

The attendant was a strange looking fat woman with nictating eyelids and a really wide mouth, like one of those disguised space aliens from...some cartoon or another. I didn't really want to find out what her, his, _or its_ story was.

Anyway, Amanda leads me up to one of the industrial driers, climbing inside with her suitcase.

I frowned at the thing, but then join her when I see her opening a panel at the rear of the drum, disappearing into the dark.

When in Rome...

After crawling in the dark for a few moments, we emerged in a vast desert, our secret tunnel apparently a mouth-like feature in a grotto built into an immense matte painting.

At this point, I wasn't phased by the weirdness. My only thought was: _That's interesting_.

"You don't seem surprised," she said. "Have you been here before?"

"What can I say?" I answered. "I step into an elevator, enter another dimension, and come out wearing Ghostbuster clothes. I'm almost at the point where I'd be freaking out to see something that isn't strange and unusual."

She laughed. "So _that's_ why you were wearing that!"

I reddened. "You saw me?"

Kate shook her head. "_Vanessa told me_ you were wearing something silly, but kinda cute..." She cleared her throat. "_Anyways..._"

She set her suitcase down, clicked the button, and our ride reappeared.

We climbed in, and I watched her push the pedal to the floor, sending us rocketing across the flat dusty landscape.

The speedometer read ninety, then a hundred, then two hundred. Wispy clouds rolled overhead as small rocks, skulls, sagebrush and tumbleweed flew past.

"Um, Mandy?"

She frowned. "It's Amanda or Kate or Kay. No Mandy, please. I'm not going to _come and stop you from shaving_."

I grinned. "Fine. _Kay_. Have you seen my dad?"

Kate nodded.

"Great. Where is he?"

"I'll, uh, _show you later_."

"Can you...tell me anything about where he lives, or what he's doing?"

She rolled her eyes. "He's _drawing_, of course. That's all he does these days. Lives in a little picture perfect house with a picket fence and all. Um, _Holli_ didn't share in his little dream, so she dumped him."

I supposed that explained her attempts at seduction. "So who's he with now?"

"Oh?" she said. "Some Japanese chick. Chori Tart. Something like that."

Suddenly I didn't feel like seeing him. The situation sounded a little..._awkward_ and I wasn't sure if I wanted to know any more. I knew I _had_ to see him at least once, I just I figured I _needed a little time to think_ before dropping in. "You're right. Maybe we should go there later."

We drove on in silence for a few minutes, staring absently at the endless stretches of desert. The uninteresting scenery reminded me, once more, that Cool World wasn't for me.

"Um, I know this might sound bad, considering how we're kind of friends and all, but I'd really like to leave this crazy place sometime, you know, go back to earth. I figure you, being a human and all, would know something about getting out."

She glanced at me, but I couldn't tell what she was thinking.

"Anyway," I said. "I'd be happy to take you with me if you wanted to come with. Maybe you could stay at my apartment or something..."

Now she looked embarrassed, which is weird, considering her present state of undress.

"_Or_ I could _help you find your own apartment_, maybe take you to Kmart or something so you can wear something normal for a change."

"Don't you like what I wear?" she asked.

"_Yeah!_" I said. "_A little too much_. That's kind of the problem. There are _other people..._"

"I'd like that," she said.

"So...do you know how we can get out of...Cool World?"

Kate shook her head. "That's _not so easy_. I know of a few holes in the fabric of this world, but _they're not very large_."

I swallowed as I thought about what Holli told me about widening them. "What about these spikes? Don't they do anything?"

"Some," she said. "The trouble is, they're not accessible from this plane."

"So you're saying I'm basically stuck down here."

She shrugged. "You make it sound like it's a bad thing."

I really didn't want to bring up the subject Holli mentioned. Especially in the presence of a real woman, one that saw..._something _in me that others didn't, but I didn't want to live in this nuthouse forever, either.

"Is there any way to make the holes bigger?"

"I don't know," she said. "There have been attempts to build _machines_, but I don't know what good they did."

"Is it true that...my dad and Holli..._doing it_...expanded one of the holes in reality?"

"_That's what I heard_," she said.

"Was dad trapped here too? Until that happened?"

"No," she said. "The tears in reality were bigger then. Once the spike was replaced, it seems they all either shrank or disappeared. Some say there's a machine that either enlarges them or shrinks them down, but doodles that ask about it tend to disappear."

"Disappear?" I said. "Like, into reality?"

"I don't know," she said. "Rumor has it that they were just erased from existence."

"Great," I groaned. "So you're saying I need to sleep with a doodle to get out of here."

"_Not necessarily_," she said with a smirk.

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know. I might know some..._people_ who could steer us in the right direction...I can't make any promises, but..."

"Anything's worth a shot," I said. "When can we start?"

Kate gave me an apologetic smile. "Drew, this isn't going to be an instantaneous process. You could be here for a very long time. You might as well _try_ to enjoy yourself. Besides, _we're kinda sorta on a date._"

She _did_ have a point. And I _didn't mind_ spending some time with her. Being with her made Cool World seem a lot less stupid.

"Yeah," I said, making my smile noticeable.

After a silent moment, I said, "Answer me this question. How come so many things in this world are made of cardboard?"

She shrugged. "When a person looks at a comic, they only see two dimensions. I think it has to do with where in Cool World an object is situated, and where the object is manufactured. A lot of lamp posts and beer bottles were made near the border of another reality, so they end up being flattened.

"If it's in a comic book you've seen, chances are, it's flat. Jack told me about that. The man knows a lot about comics."

"And nobody cares about flat sofas," I said.

"Doodles are fine with cardboard. They can sit on anything that looks like a chair. I...however..._have to_ _be careful_ when I pick my furniture."

"I guess you'll have to show me what to pick, if I end up shopping here."

She made a pleased little humming sound in agreement, which made me think I had just hinted at proposing to her. You know, _picking out furniture_...

I decided to think about that later. Getting home was the priority.

I stared anxiously at the road.

"We're going two hundred miles an hour, and the desert doesn't look any different," I said.

"I know," she replied. "We're also having meaningful dialog. It affects the transit time."

"It's boring if you don't talk," I said.

"I know. That's why we'll hit a cut scene as soon as we stop talking for, I don't know, ten minutes?"

I laughed. "I'm going to be in a straight jacket when this is over. I just know it."

We sighed and silently stared at the road. The car's stereo was playing _The Way_ by Fastball. I often wonder if that band regularly gets confused with Aerosmith.

"So," she said. "Why didn't you follow in your father's footsteps and become an artist?"

I swallowed. "Mom called them `dribblings.' She never liked the stuff I made. Said it didn't look like her. I'd make her birthday cards and she'd toss them aside or lose them in a pile of paperwork or something.

"When I told her about wanting to go to art school, she laughed and said I had no talent and I was a fool for wanting to pursue that career, as there's no money in it. Said my dad just got lucky and other artists are either unemployed or working fast food. She said my father's success was a fluke. `You're never going to find that kind of success,' she said. I believed her."

"So you just let her bully you into not being an artist?"

I sighed. "It's not just her. People at school said my art sucked. They'd rip it out of my hands and draw dicks and other stuff all over it, make it look ugly. I don't know. I really don't think I'm that good, to tell you the truth.

"My art teachers weren't particularly helpful, either. Instead of steering me away from art with criticism, they did the opposite and just ignored me. I got passing grades, but it was like `_who cares_?'"

"I'd like to see you draw something."

I rolled my eyes. "What, so you can laugh at it?"

"No..."

"I don't know. I'm not sure I feel like it. I don't think you're a fair judge. Kinda like how my dad used to take one of my pictures and say `That's great' and put it on the fridge without even looking at it. His mind was always _here_, you know."

"I'm not like that," she said. "I'll be honest."

"I'm afraid of that too," I said.

"Don't be. Draw something. If it's terrible, I won't ask you about it again. I promise."

"Fine," I said. "But I don't see any art supplies-"

She pushed a button and my seat retracted a few feet.

A trapdoor on the floor popped open, and I saw a drafting table unfolding in front of me, complete with pencils, pens and markers.

"Good grief," I groaned as I stared at the blank artist's tablet lying open on its center.

I just stared at the page.

"Can't think of anything to draw?"

"Um, yeah?"

I _was_ thinking about drawing _her_, but she wasn't in front of me, so I thought I'd mess it up.

She chuckled, then addressed the computer. "Chips, take us to the usual place."

"Yes, ma'am," it replied.

Thinking I wasn't her first, I said, "What...usual place?"

"There's a place I visit all the time, to look for artifacts. You'll like it."

And she climbed into the back, pulling out a bench built into a bulkead across from me. The vehicle, apparently, was driving itself, but I figured it par for the course in cartoon land.

"So you're watching me draw?"

Kate nodded. "I figured you might want me here, _to inspire you_."

I swallowed. "Okay."

And so I started a sketch.

"So, um," I muttered. "Being as you are a stripper, I suppose this is a dumb question, but have you ever had any other boyfriends? Like in a serious relationship?"

She chuckled. "You mean, have I ever had sex?"

I was so surprised I messed up my sketch. "Yes. Have you ever...?"

She paused for a moment, then said, "No."

"Never?" I asked, not believing what I was hearing. "Not ever? The whole, what, twenty years you've lived here?"

"...No. Have you?"

I gulped. "Almost. The other noid girl that came with me. But then Little Sneezer...sneezed, and that's how I found this place, and you."

"So you're not seeing her anymore?"

I shook my head. "No, no. She ran off with a kangaroo."

I frowned at my drawing. It didn't look anything like her.

"Can I see it?" she said.

It was ugly. Slightly masculine, even.

"I'm not done."

She leaned over me anyway, pressing her breasts against my shoulder as she examined the drawing.

The moment she looked at it, I saw the drawing move on its own accord, eyes looking straight at me, smiling.

The ugly thing blew me a kiss, then waved back when Kate waved to it.

"It's cute," she said.

"Really?" I cried with my hand clutching an eraser. "It doesn't even look like you. Or even _your animated sister _for that matter."

"It's real," she said. "It's what a real ordinary person would draw. That's what's important, and that's why I'm going to frame this picture."

"It's an eyesore," I groaned. "But it's your decision. I fear if you keep this up, I'm going to wind up like Yoko Ono, so blinded by praise that I don't know I'm making junk."

Kate giggled. "Is that why you ordered a hat suspended in purple liquid?"

"No, but it's interesting that you made that connection. I bet you've seen her somewhere, haven't you? The animated version?"

She rolled her eyes. "Yes, unfortunately."

She gestured to the pad. "Done?"

I nodded, so she pushed a button on the wall, causing the drafting table to retract, with the sketch pad and drawing still on it. I didn't ask about it, as toons generally do that kind of thing without getting anything mussed up or wrinkled in the process.

Suddenly I hear loud beeping from the computers.

Kate rushed to the consoles, pushing buttons. "Oh no!" she cried. "Not again!"

"What is it?" I said, dreading the answer.

I heard a chorus of angry screeching sounds.

When I turn and peer through the glass, I see a cluster of animated humanoid apes and chimpanzees clad in crude harnesses fashioned out of..._real non animated objects_, approaching us in armor plated open vehicles, howling as they brandished spears and rifles.

"What the hell is that?" I yelled.

"Those," Kate said, pulling a machine gun off a wall rack. "Are called _The Howlers_."

She slapped a magazine into the gun, clicking the safety off.

"It's been nice knowing you."


	22. Chapter 22: Bondage

You're Holli Would, I told myself. Be brave.

"Yes," I said. "I've always wanted to try S&amp;M. Well, _anything sexual_. Why?"

"How does it work?" he asked.

I stared at him in disbelief. "You're asking _me_?"

He looked embarrassed. "Yes. I do not understand the concept, and these things have no instruction manual. Is that bad?"

I burst out laughing. "You're serious. You don't know what you're supposed to do."

He reddened, literally. "You make a joke at my expense?"

I waved at the cases full of..._equipment_. "Then what's all this?" I said. "Surely you wouldn't-"

"It came with the apartment," he said. "The previous tenant went to jail. I kept it because it looks nice."

I chortled through my nose, then laughed out loud. "And you have two experts living downstairs!"

He blushed. "I was too embarrassed to ask."

This made me laugh more. "Okay, Mr. Be Brave And Be Yourself!"

So...not the `rape bind torture kill' sort of guy, I decided.

Feeling extremely relieved, and much more comfortable with him now, I threw an arm around his shoulder. "Let's go have that drink."

Around the corner lay one of those designer kitchens. Lots of clean angular lines, fancy sink, fridge set flush into the wall, stove with two dimensional burners (like fancy stoves in the real world). No visible trash can, you probably had to access it by pulling out a drawer built into the marble topped island in the center.

At the rear was a cozy little table with a couple tall stools positioned around it. Chad gestured for me to sit as he pulled a chilled bottle of..._some kind of wine_ out of the fridge.

"So," he said as he poured some vino into a glass in front of me. "You are an artist."

"Yes," I said indifferently.

"You told me of your difficulties. Why are you not rich and famous?"

"Because I live, _correction: lived_, in the real world. It's a hard field to break into. You can't just fill out an application. There's too many artists to compete against. There really is no demand for it." I sighed. "And you can never tell what these companies want."

Chad looked puzzled, probably because he never had to fill out a job application in his entire life.

I sipped the wine, which again tasted like soda pop. "Even on the internet, there's too much competition. You get ignored. People pass your stuff by for someone with slightly more talent. Even with my degree, I have no better chance than anyone else. It's all about who you know, and I don't know anyone. That's why I work where I work."

He poured a glass for himself. "Your world sounds difficult."

"It is," I said. "It is."

As we gazed at each other, I thought I heard the sounds of Austin Roberts' _Daydreamin_' playing from somewhere.

"I must confess to you that I have not been truthful, my sweet. I did not lose my eye in a gang fight. I am deeply ashamed to tell you this, but the injury happened when I got drunk and fell down a staircase. You see, _I get so lonely_..."

"It's okay," I said. And then I chuckled a little. "I actually like that story better. Thank you for sharing."

He looked surprised. "You do not think any less of me?"

"Of course not," I said. "To be honest, it makes me like you more."

I smiled. "So..."

I pantomimed dancing with my fingers on the tabletop.

"Very well, spicy peach. I shall demonstrate. Follow me, where there is more room."

I picked up my fake wine, following him into the hardwood area between the entry hallway and a big ceiling to floor window.

"I will change," he said.

He disappeared for a second, returning in a nylon bodysuit. I expected a tutu, but was glad he didn't do something cheesy like that. I supposed he was _serious_.

The _Blue Danube Waltz_ started up from somewhere, and he..._actually impressed me_.

A couple times he even scooped me into his arms, tossing me in the air, with my drink still clutched in my hand. As you may or may not know, most cartoon drinks do not spill.

In fact, one time a goldfish jumped out of its aquarium, swamp around in my drink while Chad was tossing me around, and jumped back in its tank like it had been choreographing the move for a long time.

"In practice, I often balance a glass of water on my nose," Chad explained. "Shimmer likes to perform just as much as I do."

When the dance concluded, I clapped in appreciation. "Bravo!" I said.

He blushed. "Now I change."

"Why?" I said, plucking one of his shoulder straps. "I told you, _I like a man in tights_."

He blushed more. "Want to see my dolls?"

I giggled, wondering if his fake wine was actually making me tipsy, or if it were some sort of placebo effect. "Sure. Lead the way."

He led me into a little den containing black loveseats, a desk, a lava lamp, and framed landscape paintings.

In the center of the room, on a coffee table, was the girliest looking dollhouse I'd ever seen. He placed a hand on it, giving me a conspiratorial grin.

"I tell everyone that it belongs to the daughter of a mobster that frequently visits me, but no, _it is mine_."

I suppressed a laugh.

He rang a doorbell on the little house, and an entire wall slid away, revealing an impressive doll collection, both cartoon and real. It reminded me of my bedroom when I was nine.

"And you're sure you like women?" I said.

This embarrassed him. "Why? Why must a man who plays with dolls and wears tights have to love men?"

"I don't know," I said. "Good question."

"What would I even _do_ with a man? They have no breasts to fondle, no..." His eyes traced the outline of my crotch. "No..._beaver_ to...to _dam_."

"I agree," I said.

He took a Josie and the Pussycats doll off of a shelf, standing it outside the door of the house.

The doll reminded me of Drew's girlfriend.

I tried not to think about it. Instead I grabbed a weird looking sort of Ken doll with a dog's head, setting it down next to his doll.

"Hello, Josie!" I made my doll say.

"Hello, handsome dog man," Chad made Josie reply.

What followed was kind of weird. We sort of played house with the dolls, combed their hair and stuff, but then we decided the two were making out (me playing the guy and he the girl. I know, really weird.), and then we set the dolls down, got on the loveseat, and started making out for real.

"Tell me about your beaver," he said in between kisses.

Blushing, I said, "There's not much to tell. I sowed him on Holli's outfit and he came to life when I arrived in Cool World."

"Can I touch it?"

"Sure," I said, feeling kind of weird.

I opened my dress, giving him access to the patch.

The first time he put his hand there, my beaver bit him.

"Now Beaver!" I scolded. "Play nice! You might be seeing more of him."

Beaver swallowed. "Sorry."

"Try it again," I said.

Chad did, running his finger down the creature's face, and my crotch by proxy.

I drew in a shuddering breath. My beaver closed his eyes, letting out a deep purr.

My legs weakened with the vibrations.

"Stop!" I shouted, though I wasn't sure if I were scolding Chad or the Beaver. "That's enough!"

Chad jerked his hand back.

I gave him a nervous laugh. "No offense. I just want the _party _to last a _little bit longer!_"

He blushed. "I understand."

And then we kissed some more.

"I gotta admit," I muttered when we broke apart for a moment. "You certainly aren't what I expected. You're the most _interesting_ cartoon I've ever encountered."

"With your permission," he said. "I would like to make myself more interesting. Explain to me the S&amp;M?"

And so I led him back to the glass cases of..._stuff_.

"There is a closet full of these things in the bedroom," Chad said.

I pointed to a leather dominatrix outfit. "What about that?"

"I do not remember. I do not open that closet often."

"But you _do_ open it," I said.

"You know, _I get so lonely..._"

"Oh-kay!" I said, a little disturbed.

He opened the case, and I removed the costume, and a whip. "Is there a place where I can change?"

"Will I not see everything eventually?" he asked.

I rolled my eyes. "It takes the thrill out of it. You got a bathroom or something?"

"I will show you."

He led me to a tidy designer bathroom with an expensive looking shower and one of those weird square sinks that stood on top of the cabinet instead of sitting inside it.

I closed the door and changed into the thing I picked out.

I'm almost positive that there was something lurking in the mirror, ogling my naked body, but I kept telling myself it's no big deal, Holli wouldn't have a problem with it.

My new outfit was, of course, animated. The bikini was black, with a `trapdoor' between my legs and tubing running up the seams. It came with high heeled boots, gloves and a dog collar.

I zipped the trapdoor shut, then stared at myself in the mirror, running my fingers down the side of the costume. The tubing flickered a neon pink for a split second, apparently in response to my body's, um, _arousal_.

I got scared, hesitating to even step outside. My costume went dark.

"Holli," I breathed, stroking my hip. The tubing flashed, but only for a second.

"So you're kicking me to the curb?" my beaver said from the floor.

"Sorry, `Beav,'" I said. "I don't have an iron or a sewing kit."

"You don't need one. Just pick me up and slap me onto something."

"I don't know," I said. "I'm not sure I need you anymore. I've found..._a man._" My outfit flickered.

"He said he wants to _dam a beaver_," the patch said.

Blushing, I tugged on the patch until it came off the teddy like a piece of rubber. I only had to touch it to the crotch of my bikini to make it stick like I'd sown it on. I stuck Fifi on the bra portion.

"Okay," I breathed, flickering pink. "Let's get dangerous."

I clopped out on those ridiculous heels, stretching and curling the whip.

The ballerina was drooling, literally like a dog.

I closed `doggy's' mouth and asked him where the bedroom was.

Yes, kind of bold.

You know how a horse can `feel its oats'? I think I was _feeling my suit_. That's the only thing I can figure.

His bedroom was _interesting_, to say the least. It had bondage mannequins, an iron maiden, a hanging sort of jungle gym with chains dangling from it, the rack, and something that looked like that scary pillar statue from _Hellraiser_, matching, in a way, the _Hellraiser_ cube patterned carpet and wall hangings.

But then there was the pastel colored interior paint, the framed pictures of ballerinas, _and dolls_. There was even a large table featuring the Barbie Winnebago.

Okay, so maybe there were a few dolls in bondage, but they were not the majority.

The windows were large and uncovered. If someone were outside, I was certain they'd see everything, but Chad assured me it was too high up. Still, it made me uneasy.

He had a queen bed with silver coverings and a wooden headboard that appeared to be modeled after something Lovecraftian, judging by the tentacles.

"You definitely have issues," I said.

He smiled. "Are they good issues?"

I just stared at him.

After an awkward silence, I said, "I've taken self defense classes. Thought I'd let you know."

"That is _informative_," he said. "Now, please tell me what to do?"

"Um...okay..." I said. "I'd like for you to...get down on all fours. On the bed."

"I like this," he said, kneeling on the sheets.

"I'm not sure you will in a second."

The atmospheric music changed to John Mellencamp's _Hurts So Good_.

I cracked the whip on his backside, and decided I liked it. There's something indescribably satisfying about whipping a male ballerina in leotards. I'm certain it would generate more interest in _The Nutcracker_ if this practice became more widespread.

Chad didn't agree with this assessment. His first response was, "Ow! Why did you do that?"

"Did you ever watch your friends downstairs?" I chided, whipping him a second time, though a bit more gently.

"What is the purpose of this?" he said.

"I don't know," I said. "Isn't it turning you on or something?"

"No. Why would someone do this?"

"Um..." I paused. "Well, according to what I've read, males tend to finish before the women, and pain..._extends things_."

"Hmm..." It seemed he would have to think about it some before deciding to accept more abuse.

I let him whip me a couple times. I didn't enjoy it as much as I should have, but I figured you had to gain a tolerance for it. I made him put the whip away.

I opened one of his closets and saw some stuff that gave me an idea. I tossed him a thong, boots, a saddle, a dog collar and a vest. All cartoon leather.

"Uh, change out of those tights and put this stuff on. We're going to roleplay."

He swallowed. "Okay?"

I turned my back. "Let me know when you're done."

"Done," he said.

I spun around and found him..._looking rather hot_.

Seeing a pink flash, I glanced down at my outfit and saw brilliant neon lines lighting up the seams.

My mind made an instant comparison to the movie _Tron_, and I started laughing uncontrollably.

"What is so funny?" he asked.

I shook my head. "Nothing."

I cleared my throat. "You're a horse. Get down on all fours and let me ride you."

He obeyed, and I climbed on. "Giddyap."

And so he crawled around his apartment, neighing in his little outfit.

As we passed the window, I suddenly see a gray winged shape swooping by with a loud "Who-o-o-o!"

I shivered a little, temporarily losing the mood. "Chad, what is that?"

"That is Owl Woman. You should ignore her."

"Owl...Woman? What, does she look like an owl?"

"No, she is a _superhero._"

"Hmm," I said. "I've never heard of her."

"I did not say she was a good superhero. But she tries."

"Okay?"

"Mostly she protects _me_. I have not seen her do other things. It is strange. I ask her on a date one time, but she said no. It would not be good. Maybe I compromise her secret identity. I do not know."

"Do you still...love her?"

"Will you hate me if I say yes? It is not a love like I have with you. She is like a good friend. Do you understand?"

I frowned. "Are we talking `good friend that might become something more serious,' or `good friend that I will only ever love as a sister?'"

Tired of holding me up, he laid down on the floor as he thought about it. I idly stroked his tail.

"The second one, I think. I would never want to have her playing pony with me. It is not like that."

"Good," I said. "As long as you don't sleep with her, I'm comfortable with doing more of..._what we're doing_." I slapped his behind, playing with his tail.

He crawled for a few feet, then unfastened the saddle. "Now I ride."

Grinning, I took up the role of horse. It was only fair.

I think he got more out of it than I did. A couple times, he climbed on _behind my saddle_, if you catch my drift.

Finding a leash, I got another idea.

Pushing him off me and standing up, I said, "Now you're a dog."

I clipped the leash on his collar, giving it a playful tug. His thong bulged as I dragged him around the apartment like he was being walked.

Twice I saw the gray shape of this `Owl Woman' flit past the window. One time, I even saw the mysterious phantom standing on a ledge outside the glass, silently watching.

I decided to take Chad's advice and ignore it, or her, or whatever, focusing on..._making my costume light up again_.

I made my kangaroo sit, stay, heel and roll over, wherein I stomped his crotch with my high heel.

"I am in pain," he groaned. "I do not understand why I enjoy this."

I stomped him again.

"It is agonizing but sexy! Please stop! A little."

And then I dragged him onto the bed.

He grabbed me, pulling me onto the covers. "Leather passion fruit. You teach me exciting things. I am getting ideas..."

"What...kind of ideas?" I sort of purred.

He took a ball gag out of the closet, showing it to me. "This goes over your mouth. Yes?"

I nodded.

He held it close to my face. "May I?"

I shrugged. "What, you don't want me to talk?"

Instead of answering, he shoves the ball into my mouth.

The appliance is on upside down or something, and it's got some tricky straps to it. I get so annoyed with him that I pull it out and say, "No, no, it goes like this." And I shove it into his mouth, strapping him up good.

The animated material stretched to fit his muzzle perfectly. In fact, he can't remove it.

So, um, maybe I've watched a few movies, and read a few things.

The next thing he does is try to handcuff me to the bed. My hands easily slide out with a few wiggles.

"You're not doing that right," I laughed.

I shove him onto the mattress, slip his wrists into the cuffs, and snap them down. He's helpless putty in my hands.

I'm sure I heard _Run To You_ by Bryan Adams starting up in the background.

"So..." I said, seating myself in his lap. "You ever did it before?"

He shook his head.

His manhood throbbed against my beaver, proof that he wasn't playing for the other team, after all.

"Good," I said, unzipping my trapdoor. "Neither have I. What do you think about, I don't know, me ripping off that thong and..._familiarizing myself_ with what's underneath? Sound good?"

He nodded eagerly.


	23. Chapter 23: Extra

"Howlers," I repeated as I stared out the window. "What do _they_ do exactly?"

"Oh?" said Kate. "Nothing much. Just destroy people's vehicles, kill the driver and steal things."

"That doesn't sound very family friendly," I said. "I thought cartoons aren't supposed to die."

"Not every doodle is immortal," she said. "Doodles come in two breeds: Heavies and Lights. Lights are like Bugs Bunny. Heavies are more serious, and are susceptible to death. Anime characters, for example. And then there's an ore called Erasium, which can kill any doodle.

"Howlers carry weapons made from Erasium."

"Wonderful," I groaned. "What other little surprises have you not warned me about?"

"I told you you needed that gun."

I unholstered the weapon, staring at it.

It was a real gun. It looked like something the Lone Ranger would carry around. White handled six shooter with a long barrel, and it was realistically weighty.

"You are _aware_ that I've never even _seen_ a real shooting range?"

Kate groaned. "Have you at least practiced at 7-11?"

"Maybe?"

She shook her head. "Do what you can. Noid weapons have a fifty fifty chance of killing a doodle. Howlers are part Light, part Heavy. Cross your fingers."

The whole compartment rocked, nearly throwing me to the floor.

"We have crossed a dune," the computer announced. "Sensors detecting seven unidentified vehicles, presumed hostile."

The business end of a harpoon exploded from a wall.

"Hostility confirmed," the machine said. "Switching to evasive driving mode."

It swerved fast enough to throw me onto the dash.

I peered out the window.

Directly ahead, I could see a Nissan Z convertible with metal plates nailed over its sides. A couple gray howler monkeys in protective hubcap and padlock key chain mail stood up on the rear seat, brandishing guns. Behind them, I could see the driver, an ape with a glass dome for a skull, displaying its multicolored brains.

At ten o'clock, towards the driver's, I saw an open roofed mustang occupied by gorillas.

At 3:00, a dune buggy, manned by a baboon with giant metal shark teeth.

At nine, I saw a chimp on a dirt bike. More vehicles were around the corner, out of view.

Seeing a gun aimed at me, I ducked just a second before a bullet cracked the window.

I glanced back in the bedroom and saw a pair of rubber clad legs disappearing up the staircase.

I heard a rattling sound. Spent shell casings tumbled down the steps.

When I hurried over there, I saw Kate crouched in the ball turret, blasting something at 4:00. I could hear apes screaming.

"Open a kill hole and start firing!" Kate shouted down.

I swallowed. "And where are those?"

She sighed in frustration. "Ask Chips."

When I turned around, I suddenly noticed a slot opening next to a bookcase, beyond which I could see a pair of gray apes in a jeep piloted by an orangutan that looked exactly like Virgil from the _Planet of the Apes_, right down to the orange rubber vest.

The gray ones wore armor made of coins, specifically coins with a hole in the center, wired together to make chain mail. My guess was that they had on German coins, and maybe some Yen, based on the square holes.

Yep, I thought. If this is the land of the lost stuff, money would have to be the biggest import, as the bus stations and washing machines and couches of the world would attest. I didn't know for a fact it was lost, but I did know that the stuff didn't look animated, and it had to come from somewhere. It opened several questions in my mind, but this wasn't a good time to have a philosophical discussion.

One thing I did know: If I wanted to knock off one of those gray apes, I'd need to aim for the head.

The stereo was now playing _Asleep at the Wheel_ by the Bloodhound Gang.

Deciding it was a bad idea to kill a presumably peace loving creature, I aimed for one of Virgil's gun toting pals, pulling the trigger.

Of course I missed. The gun kicked and hit air instead of the ape's head.

Aim low. I should have learned that lesson back in Cub Scouts, when we were shooting BB guns.

The gray ape growled angrily, firing a machine gun at me.

I ducked, but the bullets ripped through the bulkhead like pencils through tissue paper.

Erasium. I figured it might not hurt me, but I didn't want to test my theory.

"Get back," I heard Kate hissing behind me.

No sound of feet on metal. It was almost like she had learned stealth techniques from cartoon characters.

"I didn't hear you come down," I said.

"I know," she replied.

"But how-?"

She didn't let me finish. "No time. Move."

I got back, flinching as I heard the gun turret going off upstairs...by itself.

Kate reached into her top, pulling out a pair of glowing Mickey Mouse gloves. This she pulled over her hands, wiggling all four digits.

Four.

"Kay?" I said.

She slid a metal plate away from part of a bulkhead, revealing an armadillo in a cage. "Huh?"

"Your gloves have only four fingers. Humans have _five_. Where are your pinkies?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. They come back when the gloves are off."

She then removed the animal from its cage.

I frowned. "What are you doing?"

"You'll see," she said.

"This isn't Mario Kart," I said. "They have guns."

Kate just laughed and flipped open the lid to a torpedo tube that..._wasn't there before_, shoving the creature inside.

She slid open a small window, rapidly twirling a pair of cranks to reposition the tube. She pushed a button, and I felt a small jolt through the floor as the `torpedo' launched.

A second later, I heard shrieks. Through the bullet holes, I could see what happened: The armadillo had impacted one of the gray apes, causing instant leprosy. Unrealistic, yes, but I wasn't complaining.

The non-leprous ape tried to shove the leper off the vehicle, but in touching him, the other caught it, then Virgil caught it from him.

The jeep swerved, hit a sand dune, and flipped over, tires spinning in the air.

Kate removed the gloves, stuffing them into her top, below her cleavage.

Something went "Poo poo poo!" and the whole vehicle rocked. Kate pushed a button on one of our monitors, and I saw the chimp on the dirt bike..._spitting fireballs at us_.

It reminded me of a video game character I saw somewhere. "As if this place couldn't get any weirder."

"I know," she said. "Toki used to be such a nice monkey."

She opened the driver's side window, fired off a few rounds, and the chimp went flying off his motorcycle, into the dirt.

I looked around and saw boots stomping up the stairs again.

"Five vehicles remaining," Chips said.

I heard something clank against the side of our ride, then a hole appeared in the bulkhead along the passenger side.

When I crept over that way, I saw the monkey with the metal teeth ripping more metal away with its mouth.

I pointed my gun in its face, pulling the trigger.

Jaws caught the bullet in its teeth, swallowing it.

I fired two more shots, but they didn't go anywhere either. In fact, the creature bit off the barrel of my gun.

The monkey jumped through the hole, tackling me to the floor as it tried to bite my head off.

I held it away from me, but it wasn't easy.

I punched the thing in the face a few times, but it snapped its teeth at me, so I rolled over, beating the creature against the floor.

That's when a pair of baboons popped through the hole to assist their comrade.

Before I could prepare myself, one of them hits me in the head with a shamanic conjuring staff, knocking me away from Jaws.

I stagger, trying to keep my footing, but a pile of books, including _The Butterfly and the Diving Bell_, _Walden_ by Henry David Thoreau and something from the _Barsoom_ trilogy went sliding underfoot, threatening to knock me to the floor. I had to kick aside a copy of _Left Hand of Darkness_ to remain standing.

The baboon swung again, but I caught the staff when it hit me, using it to hurl the monkey out the hole.

Of course, as I'm doing that, I'm dodging both Jaws and the other baboon, so while I'm watching the dune buggy rolling over the baboon's head, the fist of the surviving one hits me in the face, and Jaws tries to snap my throat open.

I turns out the birds I had previously dislodged with my beating cartoon heart had somehow gotten back into my suit, for they, startled by the toothy attacker, chose to burst out of my pocket, fluttering and pecking at his eyes.

"Thank you!" I breathed.

A smaller bird whistled warningly, pointing a wing at the baboon swinging a staff at my head.

I duck, and when I stand back up, I notice Kate pushing past me with a container of black pepper, which she dumps into her hand and blows upon.

The pepper disperses into my assailants' faces, and they sneeze so hard that they go flying out into the wasteland. The driverless dune buggy careens off into a mound of sand.

Stick _that_ into your Circle of Life! I thought.

I turn around to speak to Kate, but she's gone again.

Since the driver's side was unoccupied, I peeked around the seat to find a black van manned by gorillas in leather armor, firing a Gatling gun out the sliding door. Its bullet ridden panels and obliterated vacant rooftop cannon indicated it had been what Kate had been shooting at all this time.

The gorillas gave me a nasty grin, and the Gatling gun ripped through the windshield and drivers' side window.

I briefly wondered if this were just an average day for Kate, or if someone had it out for her.

I supposed both could be true.

The soundtrack changed to _Flash of the Blade_ by Iron Maiden.

My turret gunner picked off one of the gorillas, but then I hear her shouting, "I'm out! Go get the Law's Rifle!"

I seeing a missile launcher on a rack, I take it down, and when I turn to look for Kate, she's already taking the weapon out of my hands.

"How did you get to be so fast?" I asked. "You're like the Road Runner!"

She giggled. "Thank you. I think it's...all these years of eating cartoon food. Do me a favor. Grab a gun off the wall and watch the passenger side."

Nodding, I grab a rifle and some shells off the wall, and when I turned around, she was already in the front seat, pointing the launcher.

Boom! The explosion rocked our armored carrier, but I didn't have the luxury of checking to see what happened. My birds were pointing at a Land Shark rolling up alongside me, bearing a sock monkey with a pistol and an Uzi bearing Caesar from _Planet of the Apes_, and an oversized unclothed orangutan with a crown.

I chambered a round, waited for them to get within my sights, then blew a hole in the sock monkey.

I know. Lucky shot.

Well, not really.

Being a sock money has its advantages. The thing was completely unphased.

The sock monkey blasted a hole in my suit, grazing my shoulder.

I ducked behind a bulkhead, popped in a couple shells, and waited.

No shots were fired. I thought it was safe at first, but as soon as I tried to peer around the corner, someone tried to blow my head off.

I laid flat, crawling beneath the ragged chunk of metal that Jaws had left untouched.

Mustering my courage, I readied the rifle, popped up, and fired indiscriminately.

At the very same time, I see Caesar firing right at my head.

I duck back down, but it's too late. I had felt something wet exploding from my head, warm liquid trickling down my face.

I touch the wound, then stare at my fingers.

The blood is an unnatural neon red, making me think about how they said Officer Harris became a doodle.

Well, Vanessa, I thought. I guess we'll be together after all.

But then I see the fat blue object sprawled on the floor next to me.

It was the baritone. The apes had blown several large holes in his little body, bright blood pouring out the wounds.

I touched my forehead again and suddenly realized that my skull was intact. The blood was not mine...and there were feathers stuck in it. The little guy must have swooped down in the path of the machine gun fire to save my life.

To save _me_!

"You dumb little bird," I whispered. "Why did you do it?"

The creature shrugged its wings and made a little "I dunno" sound.

That made it worse. With tears rolling down my cheeks, I choked down a sob, trying to retain my composure. "You dumb little bird!"

A cartoon character. Just a bunch of blobs of paint that someone slapped on a piece of transparent plastic, and here I was crying over it. Because the damned thing saved me. Because it somehow thought I was worth dying for.

I unthinkingly wiped my eyes and touched the bird, I guess because I wanted to give him a proper burial or something, but of course we were under attack, so I had more pressing matters to attend to.

"Trouble?" I heard Kate saying behind me.

"I nearly got killed!" I said. "These guys are professionals!"

When she saw the bird, she knelt down by it, sniffed and croaked, "That is so sad!"

She wrapped the bird in a towel, laid it on the bed, and reached for a flintlock. A dubious weapon choice, but I supposed we were running low.

The moment her hand closed around the handle, a two pronged serving fork embedded itself in her wrist. She screamed.

"Kate!" I cried.

I glanced back and saw the source of the attack, a freakish looking white ape with metal goggle things for eyes, and a weird looking machine gun loaded with cutlery.

"Are you all right?" I said, but when I looked back at her, she was holding the fork, and the wounded arm...didn't appear to be so.

"I'm fine," she said. "This outfit...it's not just a costume." She slapped her arm. "Quick. Close your eyes."

I frowned. "Why?"

"Just do it!" she snapped.

I did what I was told. I heard an animal scream.

When I opened my eyes, I saw her kneeling over the beast's corpse.

She shot me an annoyed glare. "Keep them shut!"

I shut them again.

I heard something explode.

I opened my eyes and found that Kate had disappeared.

Thinking she was up on the turret, I climbed the stairs, but I didn't see anything but an erratically swerving PT Cruiser and the Land Shark banging the side of our vehicle.

I decided, if I ever lived through this thing, I would have to talk to _someone_ about getting me my own super suit, preferably one with pants.

When I came down the stairs, I was greeted by gun toting Caesar.

I raised my hands in surrender. "Hey, uh, look. I have nothing against apes. I really don't like fighting. I think apes and humans should live freely, in harmony, without putting _anyone_ in a cage. Oh, and sorry about Virgil and the others. It really wasn't my idea."

Caesar paused, as if giving my speech serious thought, then slapped a cartridge into his gun. "Howlers don't enslave. Howlers kill."

I ducked, but his gun followed me.

As he was squeezing off a burst of automatic fire, I suddenly see a cloud of yellow feathers obscuring his head, and the bullets go spraying into the bulkhead and the computers instead.

Seizing my chance, I charged at the monkey headfirst, bashing him into a wall.

I ripped the gun out of his hands, contemplated shooting him, but then decided against it on the basis of how nice he was in the films and cartoons.

Instead I hit him in the head with the butt of his gun, dumping him out the hole in the side of the vehicle.

Sure, it did nothing to improve ape-human relations, and might end with his head under someone's tires, but one thing moves and cartoons have taught me is that a villain is not something you want hanging around in your base, even in a holding cell.

Suddenly I notice a yellow object perching on my shoulder.

It looks like the dead bird.

Exactly like the dead bird.

But yellow.

And alive.

The bird smiled and lovingly nuzzled my neck.

"I couldn't tell you before," I heard Kate saying behind me. "But when you cry over a dead doodle, sometimes you can bring it back."

I turned and saw her stroking the creature's head. She smiled at me.

I stared at a bullet hole in one of her rubber ears. For some reason her headdress had not fallen off. "Did you get rid of that Nissan?"

"Not yet," she said.

And then I heard the sound of automatic gunfire.

Kate stiffened. It seemed someone had shot her from behind.

Looking past her, I could see the ape with the exposed brain, a machine gun clenched in its paws.

"Close your eyes, Kate gasped, clearly in pain.

"Why?" I said. "So I won't see you die?"

She shook her head. "Just do it."

Since she was real, I somehow doubted my tears could save her, so I began to despair.

"Why do I have to close my eyes-?"

"No time to explain. Shut your damn eyes!"

Thinking I was giving her last request, I obeyed, and heard gunfire, an animal shriek, and shattering glass.

When I opened my eyes, I saw her throwing our killer `Mojo Jojo' out the hole.

"So," I said, leaning on a wall next to her. "Tell me this. When I close my eyes, do you change into a superhero? Am I shutting my eyes to protect your secret identity? Or are you using some secret ninja technique that you are forbidden to show me?"

"Yes," she said.

I frowned. "That really doesn't answer my question."

She shook her head. "Now is not the right time."

I raised my hands in surrender. "You're right. Let's get these monkeys taken care of first."

We peered out the hole, but saw nothing but desert.

Kate hurried to the computers, but of course they were shot full of holes.

"Chips!" she shouted. "Status report!"

"My sensors are damaged, but readings suggest no enemy vehicles. Left rear tire is flat, but middle left is holding. Gasoline reservoir is leaking, half a tank remains. Switching to post consumer waste to conserve fuel. Oil adequate, coolant needs refilling but is sufficient. Exterior damage is quite excessive."

"I wonder what happened to the Land Shark?" I muttered.

"Vehicle appears to have made a strategic retreat," Chips said.

"Chips, let's make a repair stop," Kate said.

The vehicle stopped. "It is a pleasure to serve you."

"We're going to stop in the middle of a desert?" I said.

Kate nodded. "Why not? The repairs have to be made sometime!"

We were in the middle of nowhere, but I supposed the was right. If things weren't fixed, we might not make it...unless, of course, Cool World didn't care about the ordinary minutiae of auto mechanics.

To my chagrin, I saw Kate pulling a paintbrush and a bucket out of a cabinet.

"What are you going to do with that?" I said.

"You'll see."

I followed her out of the vehicle, to the gas tank at the rear, watching as she slapped paint over a row of fuel leaking bullet holes.

"That's not going to-"

I couldn't finish the thought. The holes were gone.

"Okay," I said. "The tank really should have exploded from the bullets anyway."

"It isn't noid gas,"she said as she crawled under the machine, painting over damaged areas. "Doodle gas gets more miles to the gallon."

"So you're just going to paint this thing back in shape?"

"Uh-huh."

I rolled my eyes. "As long as it works."

I watched her paint the flat tire back into shape, then puff on the valve stem..._making it inflate_.

"You _are_ a superhero," I said. "Aren't you?"

Kate filled the tire and screwed the cap back on. "You read my comics. _You should know_ I'm a superhero. Technically a _superheroine_, if you want to be proper."

She patted the tire. "Of course, this is a cartoon radial. _Even you_ could probably inflate it." She painted over some more bullet holes.

"I know if the love interest of the superhero _or superheroine_ finds out the superhero's secret identity, they end up getting kidnapped or even killed, but I don't care. I like my relationships to mean something."

"You're dating a stripper," she said, covering another hole.

"You can't tell me that a stripper doesn't occasionally want a meaningful relationship."

Kate sighed, leaning on the side of the vehicle as she gazed into my eyes. "One thing Cool World has taught me is that everything depends on timing."

She wrapped her arms around me, warming me with her breath as her paintbrush dripped down my back. The hole in my suit vanished. "When the right time comes, I fully intend to tell you _everything_ you could possibly want to know about me, _and then some_. But now is not the time."

"_When is_ the right time?" I asked.

"_Tonight," _she said. "There are a few things I can only show you then. I want this to be _perfect_."

I swallowed. "What, are you going to show me the Batcave or something?"

She giggled. "Something like that."

I laughed. "That's right. You have The Bunny Hole. I completely forgot."

Grinning, she said, "Oh yeah. We could go there too."

I stared at her. "That's...not what you're talking about, is it?"

"It _could be_," she said. "I'll tell you later."

And she marched up to the shattered front section, painting the glass back into place.

"I wish I had something like that in the real world," I said. "All I have is auto insurance."

I watched her open and door and climb up on the driver's seat, painting the rest in.

My golden bird hopped on my shoulder, gently pecking my neck.

I smiled and held him in my hands. "I think we've just become best friends," I said to it. "Do you have a name, little guy?"

"I'm sorry, I'm not contracted for any speaking roles," it said, then covered its mouth in horror.

I smiled. "I won't tell anyone."

And then an idea popped in my head. "How about I call you Extra?"

The bird put a wing tip to its beak in thought, then shook its head.

I opened my mouth, but then it nodded, I guess changing its mind.

"Extra it is, then."

The bird replied by singing _You Made Me So Very Happy_.

Kate finished repairing our ride, and we both climbed back in, watching the desert pass by as the vehicle resumed its course.

"Do we really have to wait ten minutes?" I said.

"It varies," Kate replied. "And sometimes it's faster if you say hints about scene changes, like `I wonder how So And So is doing' or if you are about to give away too much of the plot before the right scene."

"I'm not a psychic," I said. "So that probably won't work."

I cleared my throat. "Gee, I wonder how dad is doing!"

Nothing happened.

"I think they're wrong," said Kate. "You _do_ look like him. You both look very _Italian_, what, with that long nose and face, and that dark hair."

"Um, yeah." I said. "I suppose I _do_ get that from him."

"Would it be weird if I told you I found that kind of sexy?"

I swallowed. "No, _I suppose not_..."

"Tell me something about..._your dad_. What was he like when he wasn't drawing pictures? What do you remember the most about your father?"

"Honestly?" I said. "It's going to sound strange, but what sticks out in my mind the most is all those times, when, left to his own devices, he'd eat cold hot dogs. He'd take them uncooked from the fridge and scarfing them down without a bun or anything, kind of like an animal. Then there were the plain sandwiches he'd make out of butter and bread. Oh, and he'd squeeze Easy Cheese on his fingers instead of putting it on crackers or something. I think it explains a lot about his lack of restraint."

She laughed. "I take it he wasn't that great of a chef."

I shook my head. "He knows one or two things, but it doesn't quite go beyond the mac and cheese category."

"But you can do better."

I shrugged. "I'm not going to open an eatery, but I know some stuff. I know how to make burgers and fried fish. All I'm saying is, if and when I am reduced to the point of eating raw hot dogs, I'd know that something has gone terribly wrong."

Kate grinned. "I think I've found myself a new chef!"

This made me blush.

I didn't know exactly how to reply to that, so I didn't. I just nodded.

There was an awkward silence.

Feeling something tickling my arm, I looked down and saw that it was an insect.

Not Jiminy Cricket or some other cartoon bug. An actual insect.

No. Wait. It wasn't.

I was looking at a scratch mark made by an ink pen. The legs and feelers were nothing more than lines.

It reminded me of those wispy long legged spiders that crawl down your wall, thinner and wispier than even a Daddy Longlegs, or those mosquito-like strider things that creep down the blinds. It made my flesh crawl.

Shuddering in disgust, I squished the hideous thing into the door.

"Sorry about that," Kate said. "I don't know how those get in."

I sighed, staring at the squished..._thing_. It was now just a black blob on the door, but I kept waiting for it to start moving again.

"Can I ask you a weird question?" Kate asked suddenly.

I raised an eyebrow. "Uh...I guess?"

"Do you get turned on by failure?"

I stared at her in shock. "What the hell kind of question is that?"

"I'm not sure," she said. "I noticed that you kinda, um, frowned and _squirmed, _you know, sort of_ sexually_, when you were unhappy with your drawing, and I started wondering if that's what it was."

"Um," I stammered, but I was too embarrassed to say more than that.

At last I said, "I think you hang around cartoon villains too much. I _really can_ see some of them getting off on that sort of thing."

"I don't hang around _that many_ villains," she said. "Do you _really_ think that's what it is?"

I frowned. "I don't know."

Another awkward moment.

Perhaps to spare me more embarrassment, she blurted, "You know, sometimes, when I'm trying really hard to do something right, achieve success, whatever, and I find myself failing miserably at something, the frustration, I don't know, sometimes it gets me _horny_. I'm not sure why that is, it just _does_. Am I crazy, or do you get that too?"

I frowned. "I..._sometimes_. Especially when I'm driving and I've missed the job interview and the car's knocking because the tank is empty from me driving around lost..."

I paused and thought about it for a moment. "I always thought it had something to do with rebelling against my parents, you know, getting excited about not doing what you're told, and getting a job or whatever."

She sighed. "Yeah..."

"So now I'm curious," I said. "What have _you _failed?"

"Well," she said, blushing a little. "My...adopted parents wanted me to get a real human education, so they paid top price for Cool World's greatest tutors to come instruct me.

"I sort of _underperformed_. I got _distracted_ with superhero stuff, so my grades, as arbitrary as they were, were terrible. The funny thing is, the more I failed, the more I got excited. I felt terrible, but, well, my crotch had its own ideas." She shrugged. "I've always wondered about that. It's not anything particularly sexy."

Underperforming, I thought. That's me all over.

"Anything you've failed at more recently?"

Kate frowned. "Um, Spiderman wanted me to deliver something to his mother's house, medicine or something, and a gang of thugs stopped me halfway there.

"Before I beat the crap out of them, they destroyed the medicine. I felt really bad about that too, but I sort of resented Spiderman for making me do stuff he's too lazy to take care of himself, and that's probably why it turned me on, I guess."

I momentarily felt sorry for Spiderman, but then again, he's fictional, so I didn't care that much.

Excited by failure.

It was a depressing idea, but I appreciated how she could verbalize something I'd been struggling with for years.

For a moment, I just silently contemplated this, but then I felt a bump.

When I looked up, I saw..._holes_ ahead of us.

Holes in front of me, above me, around the vehicle on all sides. A world full of holes. The armored carrier rattled and bumped as it rolled over them, jostling us in our seats.

Aside from these black rounded shapes, the sky and ground was a flat titanium white surface.

Oddly familiar.

When I heard _Nowhere Man_ by the Beatles, everything clicked into place.

I'd seen this exact scene in the _Yellow Submarine_ cartoon. John, Paul, George and Ringo popping their heads out of holes and going "hello!"

I always hated that song. Especially in high school, where I _was_ the Nowhere Man.

Making my nowhere plans on Friday nights.

My nowhere plans for the prom.

I didn't actually _see_ the Nowhere Man from the cartoon, but I _did_ see the Beatles.

The armored carrier bounced unpleasantly as they rolled under our tires.

And then we saw it. The Land of the Lost stuff.

It was like an immense junkyard, but everything was real.

Sparkling and semi-new mountains of lost treasure, ranging from the Marie Celeste and TBM Avengers to mountains of pennies and other types of coinage that `eroded' to form most of the `ground' in these parts.

"All of this junk is lost?" I said as I stared at a towering mountain of television, DVD and cable remote controls.

"Yes. Anything from an umbrella to a suitcase to the contents of a change purse."

"And...how does it get here?"

"Dark places like the insides of a couch and the Bermuda Triangle are along weak points in the wavelengths of both our realities, so crossover is frequent."

"So I could potentially find a way home through here."

She frowned. "...No. Stuff comes in, all right, but nothing really leaves. It's like the intake valve on a jet engine. Jack said he spent a year wandering around this place, just trying. No luck."

"And you can't make the jet engine go backwards."

"I'm pretty sure that would destroy the fabric of Cool World."

"What about Sneezer?" I said. "If there isn't a way out, how did he get into the Union Plaza?"

"He's animated, and he's small. He can squeeze out of little openings."

But that troubled her. "You're right. It shouldn't have worked. We'll have to ask him about that later."

"I'm assuming he _was_ next to the spike."

It didn't look like Kate accepted that answer either.

"You think it had something to do with me being a Deebes, or..." I hadn't given her Jessica's name, and there wasn't much of a point in doing so now. "_The other noid girl_ having all those things Holli owned?"

"_Maybe._"

I stared at mountains of unfiled tax paperwork, utility and credit card billing statements, car titles, jury summons, scraps of paper containing addresses and phone numbers and car keys, thinking it was the most awesome or most tragic thing that ever beset mankind.

So many hours of conflict and strife, when it was here the whole time.

I grinned. "One time I left a jacket in a movie theater and it disappeared. You think it's in here somewhere?"

"I don't know," she said. "If it got stolen, it's not exactly lost."

"That's true," I sighed.

She parked chips in front of a mountain of books, located to one side of a larger mountain of packages. The books and brown boxes intermingled with each other, _and_ with Mount Magazine, as if defiantly telling the universe, "I _dare you_ to find something in this mess!"

In the distance, I could see an animated Beetlejuice and Lydia surfing down a mountain of coins.

Kate got out, digging through the pile. I tried to follow, but ended up slipping on an old issue of Gamepro and tripping on a box labeled Bebe, causing a `bookslide.'

"Careful!" Kate laughed. "If you get buried, I'm not sure I'll be able to locate you again!"

Groaning, I waded through the books and magazines until I reached her spot.

The girl glanced at a copy of _Twilight_, tossed it, flipped through a few pages of _Odd Thomas_, then deposited a dogeared copy of _The Hound of the Baskervilles_ into the carrier.

I frowned at a Game Genie code book. "Is this where you go to shop, then?"

She squinted at a Xanth novel with an expression of suspicion. "Pretty much."

It seemed she didn't like the book, for a couple seconds later, she was hurling it like a baseball, into a mountain of screws, washers and nuts, likely belonging to one of those Japanese appliances you have to assemble yourself.

"Bad book?"

She stuck out her tongue. "Why would I want to read about another world full of puns?"

"Why indeed," I chuckled.

Kate lobbed another Piers Anthony into the nut pile.

"Do monkeys normally harass you while you hang out here?"

Kate looked troubled. "Some...times."

"Well, I guess they're out of your hair now." As I said this, I couldn't help but admire her pigtails. I figured the place _was_ getting to me.

We spent probably an hour wandering around, `shopping.'

It turned out that she and I had similar tastes in literature. In fact, many times she would show me a book she was unfamiliar with and ask me for my opinion, since we liked so many of the same things.

When we at last finished that, we boarded Chips and drove to..._a baseball diamond_.

A real baseball field, or rather a T-ball field, like the ones you see in little public parks, with well preserved grass in the outfield..._and a cornfield at the outskirts_.

"Whoa!" I cried. "What is this?"

"A baseball field. What does it look like?"

"But how did it get down here? It looks perfect!"

"It fell, I guess. Earthquake, sinkhole, something like that. Wanna play?"

"Sure," I said. "You got a ball or gloves or anything?"

Kate opened the back of the vehicle, tossing me the requested items.

The gloves were made out of blue-gray rubber, but I figured a glove was a glove. I wasn't in the major league or anything.

I glanced down at my clothing, then at hers.

"Won't you...ruin your outfit..._sliding to home_ or whatever?"

She shook her head. "If you've read as many comics as you think you have, then you'd know that I've worn this costume while running through burning buildings, fighting assassins in a sandstorm, diving in thorn bushes, _even rock climbing_, without a snag or a single rip. I think it can handle a little a few short runs around a baseball diamond."

I burst out laughing. "You have a point."

I supposed that even if she were wrong, dress really didn't matter for such an informal game.

We started by playing catch.

"I love how ordinary this is," she grinned, throwing me the ball. "Just catching and throwing, focusing on timing, pitches and being in the right place for the catch."

I threw her one. It missed, but she seemed to enjoy running to catch it.

"You know what's really great?" She tossed the ball over my head. "It's great how you can't stretch your arms a million miles. You have to actually dive for the ball and get hurt. It's so _normal!_"

She made the word sound like it were the new "romantic." I _liked_ that about her.

We practiced like this for awhile, then tried our hand at batting.

"I haven't touched a bat since I was a kid," I said as I made a few practice swings. The bat, although blue-gray, felt like it were made of aluminum, and I was eager to hit something with it.

"Were you on a team?" she said as she wound up.

"Yeah. But I can't for the life of me remember the name of the team. Probably the Runners or the Speedies or something."

She threw the ball, but I missed it.

And so we took turns doing that for awhile.

We both sucked, but we just laughed about it.

"Doodles always make fun of me because I hit the ball over the foul line or up by the pitcher's mound," Kate said. "Of course, they always hit it _through the moon_, or _around the world_. You're actually the first ordinary person I've ever played with."

I smiled, but felt sorry for her. "It's too bad we don't have enough players to start a real game..."

In response, Kate whistled, and instantly I see a familiar red and white convertible pulling up at the edge of the park, bearing, of course, the Cat-Illac-Cats.

The whole crew was there. Riffraff, Hector, Wordsworth, Mungo and Cleo.

They were all in baseball outfits.

It was unbelievably weird to see Mungo without his stupid little ski cap, or Wordsworth without his yellow earphones or skates, but that's how they were dressed. White Sox uniforms and baseball caps.

"You have _got_ to be kidding me!" I said with dismay.

"What," said Kate. "Cleo's my best friend."

I swallowed. "What about Riffraff? He _threatened me_."

She just laughed. "Relax, Drew. He won't hurt you. He's _pussywhipped_. Just keep your eyes on the ball."

I groaned at the pun. "That's great. But I think there's a conflict of interest. Don't get me wrong, great opposing team, but, you know, I don't want to even _stand_ next to Cleo and get the guy pissed off."

"Who else we got?" Kate called.

Riffraff hit the trunk of the Cadillac and out popped Sneezer. He had a ball glove and an Oakland Athletics outfit on.

"Nice uniform," I said as he approached me. "That team just so happens to be the lowest team on the Major League Baseball totem pole, second only to, maybe, the Kansas City Royals."

"It was on sale," he said.

"Okay," I said. "We got _three_."

Extra popped out of my pocket, chirping a cavalry bugle call.

"Sorry, Extra," I said. "I don't think that would be fair."

The bird stuck its beak into my ear, speaking in a whisper. "How about if I don't fly?"

I shook my head. "You're just too small. When I said it wouldn't fair, I didn't just mean it would be unfair to _them_."

Extra sighed and nodded.

Like a strange version of _Field of Dreams_, I saw other characters marching out of the cornfield, clad in baseball outfits and carrying gloves.

The moose and beaver from _Get-Along-Gang_, who had chosen, ironically enough, the blue of Kansas City.

Sabrina the skunk in a pantless baseball uniform.

The Sailor Moon cage dancer, wearing kind of a Oakland A's outfit with a skirt.

And then I saw...Shaggy and Scooby, similarly dressed for the occasion, and the gorilla bouncer from the Halftone Club...in an umpire's costume.

This was going to be a weird game.

The weirdness didn't end there. When Riffraff ran out to the cornfield and yelled, more odd characters came out of the woodwork, this time in White Sox uniforms.

The pole dancing Persians.

An Anime catgirl.

Gosalyn Mallard from Darkwing Duck.

And _Dogbert_.

"I hear you guys want to play Noid Ball," Riffraff said. "_And_ I hear there's going to be a wager."

I frowned at him, crossing my arms. "_A wager_."

The cat nodded.

"I wasn't aware of any wager."

"That's not what your girlfriend told me over the phone."

I stared at Kate in disbelief. "When were you going to tell me about _this_?"

She only gave me a shrug.

"How did you even have time to contact them?"

"Oh, I _made_ time," she said vaguely.

I shook my head. "Okay. What's the wager?"

"Four innings, regulation baseball," she said. "If you win, Riffraff will do everything within his power to find you a way back home."

I gulped. "_No pressure_. So what if I lose?"

"You," the cat said, poking my stomach. "Will be my slave for _an entire year_."

"Starting tomorrow," Kate agreed.

I scowled at her. "And you negotiated this bargain without even telling me."

She grabbed my shoulders, bringing me close as she looked into my eyes. "You...have no room to talk."

I blushed. "I'm not sure I know what you're talking about."

"Oh yeah? You sure you never promised anyone a free show if they gave you your wallet back?"

I cringed. She had me dead to rights.

Sighing, I said, "Fine. It's a deal."

_I just knew_ this wasn't going to be pretty.


	24. Chapter 24: Noid Ball

Author's note: To avoid giving away too much of the plot, I had to postpone the next Jessica scene until a future chapter. This will all make sense once I get to the section about Cupcake and NBF (spoilers!).

* * *

"Four innings," I repeated.

Kate nodded.

"To be honest, we only need _two _to beat you," Riffraff said with an evil laugh.

I gave Kate a pleading glance, wondering if we should just give up and accept the terms of surrender.

She seemed..._overconfident_.

"This isn't going to work," I said. "We're noids and they're animated. There's no way we can win."

"We can set the rules, Drew," she said. "You won't know unless you try."

"But it's a year..." I said.

"I've done it before. It's not going to kill you. And if _you_ win, you'll have a way home!"

"Sure," I groaned. "Whatever."

I glared at the cat, wondering what sort of sadistic torture he had in store for me, in the highly probable event that I lost the game.

He gave me a mischievous smile, his teeth sparkling to emphasize the mockery.

There was no way I would commit to a year of service. I had no intention of staying in this Looney bin for that long.

After all, no one said I had to honor my word.

"The name of the game is Noid Ball," Kate said. "Drew here will tell you the rules."

"Really?" I stammered. "Cool."

"They will be fair and balanced, just like the rules of baseball in the human world," Kate said. "If we win, it will be because of skill. If we fail, it will not be because you are cartoons, it will be because you beat us fairly."

"I hope you're right," I said. "I somehow don't think this is going to end well."

"It's a year of service, Drew. It's not the end of the world."

"Fine." I glanced at the handful of cats staring up at me. The doodles were already practicing, tossing balls back and forth with the instrumental version of the old children's alphabet song playing in the background. Just observing them told me what rules I had to lay down.

"Let's get everyone together," Kate said. "This is important."

She and Riffraff whistled and yelled the other players in. Once everyone was looking at me in attention, I took a deep breath and began.

"I'm sure you know how to play regular baseball. I've seen enough cartoons to know you probably have. This one is a little more challenging. Because you all have an obvious unfair advantage against me, I want this equally balanced.

"Rule one: No stretching your arms further than mid thigh length from a standing position. If you are in the right field and catch a ball in left field, or on the moon, in the unlikely event that I manage to actually do that, you are automatically disqualified.

Rule two. No running faster than a track star. you must actually be seen running."

"No running faster than fifteen miles per hour," Kate said, though I was certain this was still unfair.

"Rule three. No cartoon sports gear, other than gloves. Use our bats instead. A human cannot physically catch a ball struck with a cartoon baseball bat."

"Rule four," Kate added. "No baseballs hit or pitched at speeds exceeding seventy miles per hour. No spinning your arm like a fan and burning holes in baseball gloves, inanimate objects or other players."

"Five. No bringing any gag objects onto the field. It's only you and the glove and/or bat. No balls with a personality of any kind."

"Six," said Kate. "No jumping higher than the height of your belly button area, or the middle of your stomach if you don't have a belly button."

"Um, Kate," I said. "How are we going to measure all this stuff?"

She clapped her hands, and suddenly that red masked guy from He-Man with the floating chair materialized. Zodak, I think his name was.

"I have been watching and listening," the man said with a mysterious, faraway sounding voice. "And I suggest you add another rule to promote fairness between noids and doodles. So far no one has mentioned frame rate."

"Right," Kate said. "Rule seven. No frame rates below thirty frames per second are allowed. No Flash Gordons."

On cue, _the actual Flash Gordon_ groaned and walked away. I suppose he wasn't in uniform anyway.

"We must see your limbs at all times," Kate continued. "If we see you moving at illegal speeds, we will bump the frame rate up to forty."

As she said this, all the animated characters around us began turning little dials on their arms to comply.

I still wondered if the chosen speed of successive images was high enough.

"You can't literally steal a base and go home with it," Kate said. "Otherwise we won't have anything to run to."

Several doodles groaned in response.

Gosalyn raised a feathered hand.

"Do you have a question, Ms. Mallard?" I asked.

"Yes," she said. "Do I always have to stand at the foul line, or is that just a figure of speech?"

"It's a figure of speech, sweetie," Kate said.

She sighed in relief.

"Finally," I said, thinking this to be the end of it. "Eight. No trick pitches. The ball cannot fly eighty miles per hour, only to stop in mid air in front of the bat. It cannot stop in the air, do a sideways dance away from the bat and jump into the catcher's mitt. It can't get scared and run away from the bat. No corkscrews, spinning or weaving of any kind. A human can throw a trick ball without resorting to unfair gags like these. Figure it out."

The gorilla wrote the rules down on a little card, which he stuffed inside his protective vest. Zodak had his on a little computer attached to his floating throne.

And so we played our first inning.

I noticed that our theme song was Count Basie's _Did You Hear Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball. _It seemed the guy in Cool World's sound booth was either being overly optimistic, or intentionally mocking us.

It turns out that cartoons _can_ play normal, especially with normal baseballs.

That didn't make my team suck any less.

As the player of honor, I batted first.

When I approached the plate, I got a flashback of my childhood. Batting practice with mom in the back yard.

"_Get angry at the ball!_" she'd tell me.

That was bullshit. I mean, sure, you get power, but the thing she should have emphasized was _focusing_ on where the ball was, and actually hitting it.

It seemed my game had not improved since little league. Despite my little practice, and mentally forcing myself to be `in the moment', I struck out.

I swear it had nothing to do with me staring at Cleo. She just pitches the ball in a really annoying way, and I haven't batted in years.

Kate, well, she did get to first base (no comment), but when Sailor Uranus hit a foul (note: it had no feathers), Kate tried to steal second (not literally), getting caught by the pigtailed duck.

Sneezer struck out because he was too damn short, and Cleo kept throwing balls over his head.

We called a meeting about that one, finally determining that he was entitled to a second try, with the pitches restricted to the range he could possibly bat. Really, it was no different than an ump calling a pitch unfair for aiming outside the window.

Sneezer got his second chance, but he struck out again. From what I saw, I had to agree it was legal.

We took the outfield as a matter of course.

I have always hated the outfield. In little league I played so poorly that I was forever Left or Center. I got so frustrated with them either hitting the ball too far behind me or not hitting the ball to me that I picked the grass and played with the dirt instead of paying attention.

Now, with a hopefully clearer head, and in charge of the team, I decided to try my hand as first baseman.

My choice of players on the field was basically random. I had no clue about their strengths and weaknesses. I was certain we were going to lose, but there wasn't much I could do about it, aside from tire out my players with a practice, probably making their game worse. I could only cross my fingers and hope for the best.

Here's a diagram of how I placed my players:

(image)

Sabrina, left field, Montgomery Moose, Center, Bingo Beaver, Right. Sailor Uranus (no, I didn't make that up), second, Sneezer doing short stop, Shaggy on third and Scoob catching at the home plate. Kate, naturally, was pitching.

Right at the beginning, we had problems. Riffraff's teammate, a feline alien from the _Star Trek_ cartoon, tried to bat Kate's pitches, but the ump declared them to be poorly done, so the creature walked all the way to home.

Hector hit the ball. After hitting two fouls, he knocked the ball out to the Second line.

Our Sailor, I don't know, was too dainty or something to grab the thing and throw it to me until Hector was standing on my plate.

Riffraff came to bat after him, knocking the ball to center field.

The moose caught it, but again Uranus was being a primadonna, so when he threw to her, Kate had to run and grab the ball, leaving ample time for Hector to reach the next base.

Mungo knocked the ball on the edge of the foul line, almost a run, but he never did run swiftly, due to his girth.

Bingo threw the ball to me, and I got my first out.

To my annoyance, Hector stole a base while we were doing this, and now stood next to Shaggy on third.

We struck out Morgana, who had slipped into the dugout without me noticing, but the Ghost in the Shell lady (Kusinagi?) had ninja skills, so, clad in a weird pantless White Sox outfit, she hit the ball to right field, slid into first, and Hector got the first win for Riffraff's team.

Riffraff also reached second base.

The Persian cat pole dancer knocked the ball over the batting cage on the first swing, but hit the second one out by the short stop.

Riffraff tried to reach third, but when he saw Sneezer with the ball, he slid back to second with the `Ghost', leading me to devise an additional rule.

While his slide looked legal enough, there was a chance that someone would slide on the dirt like a skier behind a motorboat. This was brought before Zodak and the ump the moment we went infield.

Dogbert hit next. Kate tried to pitch a fair ball, but he was like a short potato, kind of hard to aim at, so the ump allowed him to walk.

Predictably, Riff took this opportunity to run to home plate. Kusinagi tried to follow, but Kate tossed the ball to Scoob, driving her back to third.

Riffraff tried to put Bam Bam up to bat, but I called him out on it, and we amended our rules to forbid superpowered athletes, referring back to the rule we made against hitting a ball through or over the moon.

The cat benched the little caveman, sending Pac-Man to bat instead.

If not for that yellow guy striking out, we would have never came in.

0 to 3. Things weren't looking so good.

To my surprise, after the first couple pitches, Scoob made it to second, and Shaggy to first.

I'm not positive, but I think there's a rule about rotating players, and we didn't follow it. Kate urged me to go next.

I actually knocked it into left field.

Well, _near Left_, like a yard behind second on a diagonal. Regardless, it was legit.

I was so shocked that I froze a moment and nearly got tagged out. But I made it, and Scoob got third base.

Montgomery walked on a technicality. Hector had illegally extended his arm, so Scoob was able to get us our first point.

I, on the other hand, got caught en route to Second.

So. Shaggy on Third.

An animated version of Abbott and Costello came into the dugout, doing the _Who's On First_ routine, but Kate thankfully got rid of them with a carefully timed trap door lever.

Kate batted next, knocking the ball to Center.

It defies physics, but fat assed Mungo dove and caught the ball.

"Duh, that was weird," he said from the ground. "_But it felt good_."

I was happy, at least, to see Shaggy sliding into home while the ball went airborne.

I sent Bingo Beaver to bat. The ball went right, bouncing off the ground in front of Wordsworth.

"You won't home run, you son of a gun!"

Before the beaver could make it to first, Riff caught his throw, and we were on the outfield again.

Round 3. Score: 2 to 3.

Not bad, not good, either.

Riff and the umps both agreed that if I prevented any points from scoring this round, I could bat again. The cat, of course, announced this with an air of amused skepticism.

Dissatisfied with my Sailor, I sent her to the bench.

I turned my back to her for a moment, brooding over the rest of my selected catchers, puzzling over who I would place on second. As I did this, I suddenly noticed someone tapping me on the shoulder.

"Not now, Sneezer," I said, as he had gone past me in that direction, but when I turn around, I see that it is Amanda "M" Bunny, dressed exactly like her non-animated twin.

I stared at one Amanda, then the other.

"You're right!" I said. "I admit I doubted your story a little, but...wow. You're right!"

"Like I told you," she said. "_It's this place_!"

"All right," I said. "Um, `M.' You've got second."

Sadly, she didn't catch any better than Sailor Uranus. Although less dainty, and more ready to get her hands dirty, she still missed the ball.

We lost the game. Big time.

We had doodles on our team, but I guess some are simply better at the sport than others.

Once Riff brought the score up to 2-4, the additional runs were just an insult.

It seemed I was doomed to a life of slavery.

We stood defeated, the faces of my players mostly reflecting expressions of annoyance or indifference. I was probably the only one that felt _miserable_ about it.

Perhaps in attempts to cheer me up, Kate said, "What do players normally do at the end of a baseball game?"

"Uh...celebrate?" I frowned. "_Or_, if you're little league, you get all your team members in a line, and have them walk by everyone in the other team, high fiving and saying `good game, good game' to everybody."

"That's a perfect idea!" Kate cried. "It promotes a peaceful, harmonious game!"

"_Right_," I groaned.

And so we did that stupid little ritual. It made me think of several times in which I'd muttered "good game" to my opponent with clenched teeth.

"Enjoy your last evening of freedom," Riff told me as I grudgingly gave him a high five. I felt like slugging him.

When I returned to the dugout, Kate wrapped her arms around me, nuzzling her face into my sweaty neck. "Are you getting turned on by all of this?"

I grimaced in disgust. "What, about being a slave for a year?"

"No, silly," she said, sliding a hand down my hip. "About losing. About failure."

I looked at her like she were crazy. "Seriously?"

"I think you are," she purred. "Would you like me to check?"

I didn't want to admit it, but she was right.

"You planned this all along!" I cried. "You knew I couldn't win!"

She shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not."

I should have gotten mad, maybe yelled at her or something, but instead I only thought about kissing her.

"You're really weird," I said.

"How about we go back to my apartment, and make things _weirder_?"

"You still haven't told me your secret," I said.

She pressed herself close to my body. "I'll do better than that," she said. "I'll _show_ you."

"I'm not sure I like the sound of that," I said with discomfort.

But when she took my hand to lead me out of the dugout, I didn't resist.


	25. Chapter 25: Layers

"Please tell me you're not a man," I said as we, ironically, crossed the foul line.

She frowned. "Seriously?"

I answered, "You hide a secret, and when I ask about it, you tell me you won't tell, you'll show me in the bedroom. What am I supposed to think?"

Her eyes narrowed. "You're still holding my hand."

"Well," I stammered. "Draw your own conclusions."

She snickered. "Do I _look_ like a man?"

"N-no," I said. "But this is Cool World. A person could easily disguise themselves as _anything_ without showing tell tale signs."

She looked genuinely embarrassed.

"Kate. _Amanda_. I don't know the first thing about you. You haven't told me that much about your family, or, or much of anything that didn't sound a little _sketchy_."

She looked me in the eyes. "Drew. I'm not a man. And I fully intend to prove it to you. That isn't the secret I want to show you."

Kate sighed, furrowing her brow.

"`Draw your own conclusions'," she said. "Are you saying that..."

"I don't know," I said. "I really hope I'm wrong, but..."

She leaned close to me, finishing my thought. "_But you really don't care_."

"I...yeah. Not at this point in the..._relationship_."

She didn't dispute me calling our friendship a relationship. "You really got some balls, making that accusation."

Yes, and they're all yours, I found myself thinking. But I only blurted, "Sorry. I..."

Kate pecked me on the lips. "Patience, Drew. It will be worth the wait."

As we marched across the field, I watched the players disappearing back into the corn.

"Wait," I said. "If they can do that, why did we have to take that horrible drive through the wasteland and almost get killed?" I could have mentioned Extra, but I didn't want to belabor the point.

She gave me a grin. "It wouldn't play."

I groaned. "So we _could_ have gone that way instead?"

"That only works for animated characters," she said. "I _did_ try it once, and _almost_ got through, but, well, I ended up _somewhere else._"

"What," I said. "Like somewhere in the real world?"

"No." She gave a small shudder. "Someplace in between. I didn't like it."

Noticing Kate waving to someone, I looked up just in time to see Amanda M disappearing into the corn.

For a brief second, I thought I saw her whole body turn blue, but I figured I was seeing things, due to it getting dark and her being obscured by real corn stalks.

"We're kind of grimy," I told Kate. "Is there a shower at your place?"

Kate giggled. "I like how you think. But it's a lot simpler to take care of that here."

She led me to a little building next to the field, your basic men's and women's restroom. Someone had drawn a door between the doors, labeling it `showers.'

She pointed to it. "Hit the showers."

Frowning, I tried the door, just to humor her, but it was only a drawing.

"No," she said. "Actually _hit it_."

Feeling silly, I punched the drawing lightly, and found my body _actually getting clean_, like I had showered for real. Even my clothing seemed refreshed.

"Wow," I said. "That's...anticlimactic."

"Perhaps," she said, striking the drawing herself. "But you have to admit, _it is_ convenient."

And so, with our clothing and bodies cool and fresh, we climbed back into the vehicle.

Aside from a little mischievous giggling, we maintained silence for about a minute, and the armored carrier was back in Nowhere Land in no time at all.

Kate stopped the carrier.

"I got an idea," she said. "Let's get out."

And so I did what she asked, and she folded Chips up into a suitcase.

"What's the plan?" I said.

She pulled a folded map out of her cleavage and stared at it. "Okay...if we drop down Hole 93, we'll come out 24...and that will take us to..."

She frowned at the diagram. "Well, it'll be random, but it'll still be easier than driving through the wasteland."

I just sighed, following her wherever she chose to go.

We dropped through a hole, and then I was falling...screaming from a hole in the sky...into _another hole_...

And then we were in _a nightclub_.

The interior decoration was chaotic and frenzied, like an artist had taken a bunch of methamphetamines, swallowed a bottle of ink, and threw up all over. A completely disorganized mess, but an oddly stylish one. One section of the place was all neon and black paint.

The place was populated by animated cats and wolves. It had a bar, but it was unoccupied. The music system was playing Dub Step music as they danced around the place.

As Kate was picking herself off the floor, straightening her outfit, the wolves turned and stared at her, ogling her body.

"Where the hell are we?" I asked.

"It's the Slash Club," Kate sighed. "One of Holli's properties. Let's go."

She led me through the dancing creatures, aiming for the exit. Along the way, we accidentally bumped into that ape thing that had harassed me at Holli's place.

"Hey, Kate," it said. "Is that your date tonight? Or are you just going on a little f-"

She elbowed him. Hard.

Since we kept moving, I was left to mentally fill in the blanks myself. The first thing that came to mind was something crude.

"You...aren't a prostitute, are you?" I asked.

"No." Her tone was sharp and clipped.

Sensitive subject.

We bumped into the brown lady with no legs not too long afterwards.

"Interesting choice, Kate," she said. "Does he know that-"

"I want him to hear it from me first," Kate barked.

The female looked indifferent. "It's your-"

"Keep your mouth shut," Kate said. "It's not the right time."

I had no clue about what all the fuss was concerning, but I figured out I _would_ learn soon enough.

The door was guarded by a literal _bouncer_. The guy had no legs. He just bounced on his rounded lower torso, like some kind of ridiculous punching bag. He said nothing to us, just raised an eyebrow and let us pass.

We stepped out onto the darkened street beyond. I couldn't tell what surrounded the place, just a bunch of black skyscrapers. The Slash Club itself almost looked like a gym from the outside, except much darker and covered in neon. I found it strange that the club had so many large windows when bars and nightclubs in general do not.

As I was puzzling over this, the baby mutant with the biker gloves waddled up to us.

For a moment, he scrutinized us, squinting his eyes, rubbing his chin.

When Kate tried to drag me past him, he hopped in our path and said, "I want to see what the baby looks like. If it's as handsome as me, _it might have a new playmate_."

I cringed. "Kate, do you know these creeps?"

She rolled her eyes. "Unfortunately, yes. I...used to be in a gang."

The mutant covered his mouth to suppress a laugh. "_Good one_."

"Ignore him," she said, tugging on my hand. "C'mon."

Kate unfolded our vehicle, and we climbed back in.

To my surprise, and some alarm, I began to notice recognizable landmarks passing by as she drove me to our destination.

The building with the lions.

The place belonging to Miss Terious.

And then...we were parking at Holli's apartment.

"You live _here_?" I cried in dismay.

She shrugged. "What. It's a big building. Don't look so surprised. The rent is very cheap."

We got out, and she folded Chips into a suitcase, handing it to me to carry. Being the gentleman I am, I didn't mind.

It was evening, so now the place looked deserted, with Angry Alligator (Sweet Pickles guy) running a steam vac over the carpet. Eek was still trying to wiggle his way out of the vending machine.

As we neared the elevator, I noticed Sneezer springing from a chair, marching up to us, clad only in diaper.

"You haven't forgotten me, have you?" he asked.

"Oh no, sweetie," Kate said, rubbing his head. "_You're just in time_."

I didn't have to guess what that meant. I swallowed like I were trying to down a horse pill.

This is really happening, I thought.

"You're...okay with having a voyeur," I said with skepticism.

"Drew," she said, patting her chest. "Stripper? Hypocritical much?"

To my chagrin, I also saw Riffraff and Cleo rising from a nearby couch to join our little party.

"What the hell are you doing here?" I said. "The slavery is supposed to start tomorrow."

"Technically, it's part of the deal," he replied. "By entertaining me, you're providing a valuable service."

"Plus we were curious," Cleo said with a nod. "We've never seen..._noids_ do it before."

"Really?" I said. "Holli watches _Desperate Housewives_. You'd think..."

"This is different," she said. "Kate is _my friend_."

"A _little creepy_," I muttered. Then, when I saw Kate's indignant expression, I added, "But _whatever floats your boat_, I guess."

"By the way, Kate," I said. "How _do_ so many doodles receive broadcasts from the real world?"

"Radio and television broadcasts from your world have a wider reach than you think. It's actually easier to pick up satellite data and FM radio than it is to convey objects back and forth."

"You two are _definitely_ on the same wavelength," Cleo said.

"I'd be amazed if they weren't," Riffraff said with a chuckle.

I scowled at them. "And what's _that_ supposed to mean?"

"Nothing," Cleo blurted.

"She just means that since you're both human, we can see that you two have a _connection_ that we doodles can't provide."

I eyed Kate with suspicion. "Why are we getting all these weird comments?"

"I...don't know," she said. I thought I saw her blushing. "I think it's just that there aren't that many noids around town, and when two of them get together, it's like, I don't know, watching pandas at the zoo trying to produce offspring."

"Really," Cleo said. "I'm happy for you. I thought after-"

Kate grabbed the cat, covering her mouth.

She gave me a sheepish grin, acting like nothing was wrong.

"This had better be good," I said.

"You have no idea."

Kate raised her hand to the call elevator button, then stopped.

"Close your eyes," she said.

I sighed. "I thought we were done with that."

"Last time, I swear. After this, I promise you'll never have to close your eyes for me again."

I did what was asked.

"Done," she said.

I opened my eyes.

The doors opened and I found myself looking at a room oddly similar to the interior of the bottle on _I Dream of Genie_. A purplish undecorated cylinder containing only a long couch running around the circumference.

We seated ourselves and sat in nervous silence, awkwardly staring at each other. Extra whistled some song they always teach high school marching bands to play. Kate placed her hand on my thigh.

The doors slid open again, and Kate led me out into the same floor I'd visited when I had accidentally bumped into Vanessa.

"This is Holli's floor," I said.

She nodded. "It's also mine."

The hallway was dark, illuminated only by a few wall sconces, the corners of neon signs on the front of the building, and the stars.

Holli was leaning against the door to her place, just kind of watching us. When the elevator closed, she called to Kate.

"Amanda..." she began.

"Don't," Kate said. "Just don't. This doesn't concern you."

"I suppose if you're happy..."

"Why is that a concern of yours?" I asked.

"_It's not_," said Kate.

In response, Holli just sighed and marched into her suite, slamming the cardboard door behind her.

"What's _her_ problem?"

Kate shrugged. "I don't know."

"Is there some kind of relationship between you and Holli?"

"No!" she said. "It's nothing like that. She's just..._nosy_. Thinks she's helping people out."

I frowned. "She's certainly an odd bird."

"You have no idea."

We marched down the hallway, stopping in front of a drawing of a door. Kate took out a glowing key, sticking it into a drawing of a keyhole, turning it like a locker combination.

There was a click, and the door turned real, swinging open to reveal a deluxe sort of studio apartment.

It was all one room, subdivided into the various living spaces.

Near the door, I saw a little table and chairs on the side, sort of a dining room-ish thing, a kitchenette on the other, with a small bar table.

Beyond that, I saw a half wall, with a short staircase cutting through part of it, leading to a glass box with stools. When Kate led me around this partition, I discovered, much to my discomfort, that the box was made of two way glass, and it overlooked a queen bed. It was a viewing booth.

Suddenly I felt sick to my stomach. I looked away.

The back end of the studio held a bedroom/study. Continuous bookshelves lined all three walls, filled with real books, and there was a curving couch along the fronts of the bookshelves in the southeast corner.

Oh, and there were rubber mats all over the floor, in case someone decided to wrestle, I suppose, and _mirrors_.

In addition to the viewing booth, there was one on the ceiling, over the bed, and long rectangular ones tilted at an angle above both the east and west bookshelves.

"So..." I said. "This is the Bunny..._Pad_?"

"I _suppose so_," she said, straightening her costume.

All the mirrors were reflecting a cartoon version of Kate. I noticed this the moment I stepped past the half wall.

My reflection, of course, was real.

"So..." I said, pointing to Amanda M. "These are all trick mirrors?"

She nodded.

"This seems very..._theatrical._"

She just stared at me, as if waiting for a punch line. Her reflection mostly mirrored her posture, but I saw one of them _twerking_, shaking her butt.

"Do you...record _shows_ of some kind? Charge admission? Post stuff online?"

She shook her head. "But it's not a bad idea..."

"So what's all this stuff then?"

"It just makes me feel pretty."

"Are you sure...you haven't been with any other men?"

She sighed through her nose. "...No."

She faced away from the mirrors, but her reflection showed only her front, copying her pose, legs slightly apart, arms behind her back.

"C'mon, Kate," I pleaded. "You got to be honest with me. What's the deal with all this? Why's there a viewing booth and all this stuff when I just arrived..." Honestly, I didn't know what time it was in reality, but I was pretty sure a day hadn't passed yet, because I hadn't slept. "_This afternoon_?"

Close enough.

Kate wrapped her arms around me, pressing her mouth to my ear. "You don't know how long I've been waiting for this, Drew. _A live human being! In my bed! _ I knew the time would come, if I were patient enough. I _knew_ it, Drew! That's why I had all this stuff put in. For years, it just sat here, collecting dust. But_ I knew someone like you would come to me._"

"That sounds like building a zoo and waiting for an elephant to magically fall into one of the cages."

"More like building an altar and waiting for a god to come," she said.

"So this is kind of a religious obsession?"

"Almost," she whispered. "Almost."

"I think you spend too much time with cartoons," I said.

"I agree," she said. "But now _you're here_, aren't you?"

I swallowed.

"Do you want to get on top, or should I?"

"What?" I knew exactly what she meant, but the woman was being so blunt and direct, it made me uneasy.

Well, _at least a little_ uneasy.

She dragged me closer to the bed. Heart shaped pillows, powder pink bed coverings. "Top or bottom?"

"Uh, _bottom_, I guess-"

The moment I said this, she shoved me onto the silken sheets.

I retreated toward the pillows, scuttling on my legs and elbows like a crab.

The unnaturally bright glimmer above me told me Amanda M was watching me from up there, too.

She crawled across the sheets like a tiger on the prowl, and she was prowling for me.

"Wait," I blurted, pointing up. "Are you really going to let your sister watch the whole thing?"

Kate laughed. "We've already got three doodles in the audience," she said as she pulled off my shoes and socks. "What's wrong with one more?"

"_I can see her_," I said.

"I told you, _we share everything_."

She unbuttoned my cartoon suit top. My reflection's suitcoat came off at the same time Kate was taking mine off.

"Is she going to copy everything that we do?"

Kate stopped in the middle of unfastening my shirt buttons and sighed. "Is that a problem?"

It was kind of a problem. "Um..."

She finished unbuttoning and undid my belt. "Are you getting performance anxiety?"

My response came out a little high pitched and girly sounding. "Yeah?"

She giggled.

"Just breathe. Slow and steady. Focus on _me_. You _want_ me, don't you, Drew?"

I nodded.

Kate pulled my pants off. "Good. Don't pay attention to them. Only pay attention to me."

And then my boxers came off.

She straddled my lap, sliding her rubber thong against my growing erection as she adjusted the straps on her rabbit headdress.

"So. Drew..." she said, lowering her voice to a husky tone. "Do you want my ears up, _or down_?"

It was a reference to a cartoon I had seen, but I still didn't get it. "Huh?"

She sighed, pointing to the ears. "Do you want this off, or can I keep it on?"

"On please," I stammered.

"On it is." She unbuttoned the middle of her thong, allowing me to penetrate her.

I gasped as she eased into my lap, burying my throbbing manhood further and further within her body.

Her insides felt oddly _cool_, and _slick_, but it was my first time, so who was I to say if anything was amiss?

Extra and his blue companions extricated themselves from my rumpled cartoon clothing, flying up to perch on one of the bookshelves.

"We should sell tickets," Kate said with wry grin.

I let out an uneasy chuckle.

Noting my nervousness, she grabbed my hands, placing them on her legs. "It's okay to touch them. Right now they're _yours_."

She wiggled herself upon me. "Feel free to touch and grab anything you want."

I grabbed her buttocks, sliding my fingers around the soft curves. I thought I heard the birds clapping like this was a golf tournament. Tried to ignore it.

"Do you think I'm a man now?" Kate purred.

"No ma'am! And I've never been so glad!"

She pulled herself up my hardened muscle, then slowly slid herself down. The cartoon version of herself was doing the same thing in the reflection.

"Can your twin?" I gasped as she repeated the process. "Can she get an orgasm from-"

It was hard, _difficult_ to talk in that kind of situation.

She got the idea anyway. "Oh _definitely_," she said with a wiggle.

We kissed.

"I'm sorry. I haven't been honest with you," she said as she rubbed her rear against my lap.

"Amanda M is not a twin, or a sister. What you're seeing in those mirrors is my actual reflection."

"But I saw her at the game!" I protested.

She shook her head, stopping her activity for a moment. "That was Mystique impersonating me. You _are_ familiar with Mystique, aren't you?"

I stared at her in shock. She hired a shapeshifter to deceive me!

"The name..._rings a bell._"

I froze, my mood ebbing somewhat. "You lied to me."

"I was afraid you wouldn't want me if you knew the truth."

_Things below_ were softening now. "So this was all a trick to get me in bed."

"I could argue the same thing about your little deal with Sneezer."

She rocked back and forth on my lap, coaxing things back into rigidity.

"There's a law," I said.

"Yes." She pulled herself up on me. "I've seen how you looked at those doodles. Kusinagi. Vanessa. Heck, _even Cleo_." She let out a soft moan as she lowered herself. "Admit it. If you never met me, you would have broken that law. For your wallet." She rose back up.

"Fine," I gasped. "Yeah."

I slipped my hand under her garters. "Why do you have a cartoon reflection?"

She eased herself down. "Doctor Strange," she gasped. "He trapped me inside something called the Purgatory Crystal. The device...separates your spirit from your body. It was meant for doodles, not humans. I escaped, but it _changed me_. It changed my reflection, it changed my physiology, it changed..._everything_."

Cartoon world or not, I didn't buy it. I was stretching my willing suspension of disbelief to the breaking point when I heard her first fib. "That sounds just like the other story you told."

"It's true, okay?" she said in a shuddering breath as she pulled herself up.

"I still don't understand why you would make up that lie about a sister when-"

She interrupted me with a wild passionate kiss, rubbing up and down against me. The sensation of that body in that rubber outfit sliding across my bare skin was electric, the visual endlessly stimulating. And she kept doing..._what she was doing_.

I wanted to pick apart this story about a magic crystal. I wanted her to tell me the truth, but the moment I tried to question her about it, she kissed me some more, riding my lap.

"You're lying to me," I gasped as her pace increased.

"I know," she moaned. "I'm really sorry, but I can't tell you yet. Not until we're done."

"You admit it!" I cried in outrage. "I _trusted_ you!"

"You wouldn't understand." And then she suppressed my next angry protest with deep kissing.

I was angry.

Frustrated.

_It kind of felt like failure._

She pulled her lips away from me with a giggle. "I was right. Failure does turn you on."

"But I didn't-" I said.

"You failed to get the answer you wanted."

And then she kissed me again.

My brain shut down and I just started thrusting.

I mean, hey, even though I felt completely betrayed and angry..._we were in the middle of something_. I think in the back of my mind I just decided to shut up and enjoy the ride.

I may have resented her, but I couldn't really say I hated her. At least, _not enough to quit._

I heard someone playing _If You Really Love A Woman_ by Bryan Adams as mood music, but I tried to tune it out.

When we had started, I found the movements of the animated figure in the mirror embarrassing, but now, as things were getting heavier, I actually found it exciting. I didn't want to admit it to myself, but my eyes kept wandering up there.

Getting really into it now, Kate discarded her bunny ears, shaking her pigtails loose.

As she rode upon another thrust, she moaned loudly, and all of a sudden I see a pair of animated cat's ears exploding from her hair.

I stopped what I was doing to stare at her.

"What! What's that!"

"Nothing," she gasped. "They just..._pop out_ whenever I'm surprised, or really excited."

"It's cute," I said.

"I know."

"I like it."

"_I know._"

She wiggled her butt down, physically urging me to resume our activity.

Since we were already halfway there, I went with it.

"_How_ do you know?" I gasped.

"How do you think?" she said in a half moan. "I'm sitting on your `like' meter!"

And that's when I see an orange tail burst from her rear end. Her hair coloration changed to red like it had been instantly dyed that way.

I gawked at her, too shocked to continue. "You're Vanessa Vixx!"

She nodded. "Think of it like, I don't know, Mini Wheats. Vanessa is the wheat side."

"And you're frosted," I groaned.

"I told you I had layers."

I cringed. "_Like an onion._"

"Exactly."

"I didn't know you were a cartoon, or..."

She closed her eyes, shook her body, and suddenly I was being straddled by the animated version of herself. Amanda M. "Or what?" she said, wiggling herself into my crotch.

The combination of sensations was exotic, intoxicating, kind of like screwing living paint. And when I looked at the mirror, I saw a human making the same motions the cartoon did.

"Okay," I stammered as I slid my hands up her brightly colored legs. "So maybe I might anyway."

"That's what I thought," she purred, sliding up and down on me.

Our movements gathered speed, becoming more and more urgent, until at last we reached that point where everything kind of tips over the edge, and...

Incredible waves of pleasure flooded our bodies, exploding outwards with such power that _all the windows and mirrors shattered_, and then the second wave came like an earthquake, scattering the birds scattered and throwing the voyeurs in the box backwards down the staircase.

The walls cracked, pictures fell to the floor and shattered.

Oh, and _our bodies were flickering with glowing light_.

"Whoa!" I shouted. "What the hell was all that!"

"_What did it feel like_?" she giggled.

Amazing, I thought, but I didn't say it. I wanted _answers_.

"I...uh, Drew, I haven't exactly been truthful about something..."

"You haven't been truthful about _several_ somethings," I said indignantly. "What the hell is this glowing?" I held up my hand, and it turned into a Mickey Mouse glove, then changed back. "Out with it, Kate! What is this!"

She caressed my naked chest. "I didn't want to tell you before, but...we have the same father."

I pushed her back, trying to sit up, trying to get away. "But that's impossible! You're animated! How-"

"Holli Would is my mom."

I shuddered. "Oh God. You mean we're like..."

"Brother and sister," she finished bashfully.

Suddenly, it all made sense.

All the snide comments and subtle innuendo.

Why we seemed to be so similar.

Why she knew so much about dad.

When Holli laughed about she and dad having children, that wasn't a "you've got to be kidding", it was...something else entirely.

And Kate/Amanda/Vanessa, had been lying...about it all.

I felt unclean. Polluted. Like some character from a V.C. Andrews story.

I quickly disengaged myself from her.

"You said you never knew your parents!"

"I _wish_ I never knew them."

"So you lied."

She nodded. "How else was I supposed to get you to sleep with me?"

I had no answer for that.

"If it makes you feel any better, I'm technically your _half_ sister."

"When were you planning to tell me this!" I cried.

"_Now_." She slid a hand up my thigh, but I pushed it away.

"This is disgusting. Why would you even do such a thing? _Why?_"

"Drew. I'm a half doodle. I don't belong to either world. As a human, I live in a world that's flat and tasteless. As a doodle, I can't feel anything. My mom slept with a noid, and she became part real for a time. I thought that maybe if I did the same thing, I'd become _more real_."

I scowled at her. "And the fact that you're essentially committing incest doesn't bother you."

She gave me an apologetic shrug. "You have no idea how long I've been waiting for a man. A real human man."

"Why not go the other way?" I said. "Why not sleep with a cartoon and become more...cartoony?"

Amanda frowned. "Why would I want to do that?"

"Wait," I said. "You told me those ears come out when you were surprised. Why didn't that happen when I first met you, um, as Vanessa?"

She gave me this look like I already knew the answer.

My mouth fell open in shock. "You bumped into me on purpose!"

Amanda chuckled. "If it's any consolation, _my tail did pop out_..."

I sighed. "At least I'm not hearing _Dueling Banjos_."

"Don't-!" she cried, but it was too late.

A pair of cartoon hillbillies with long beards and overalls popped out of the floor with their musical instruments, performing the song I just mentioned.


	26. Chapter 26: Cupcake and NBF

Amanda removed the hillbillies from the room by means of a trapdoor lever disguised as a copy of _The Hunger Games_. If anything, I thought. A person who makes that their first choice of reading material deserves to fall through that trapdoor.

We sat naked on opposite sides of the bed, just staring at each other in awkward silence.

We were still glowing, but now it was doing funny things to us.

Not "Funny ha-ha." More like, "Funny uh-oh."

Once the last of our orgasm had subsided, I saw Amanda's body physically begin to change.

Before, as we were nearing climax, she had been fully animated, her flesh a bright pastel, her features streamlined and delineated, but now the brightness was fading, turning back into Kate.

I, on the other had, appeared to be turning a bright peach at a rate of roughly one time every other minute.

She gave me an apologetic smile. "Thank you."

"For what?" I blurted, then, realizing what she meant, I frowned and said oh.

She pulled on leg up in front of her, studying the device attached to her ankle.

"Is that really a superhero notification system?" I asked.

"No," she said with a grin. "It only tells me when my body will change into Melissa or Vanessa or Kate."

She squinted at the watch, pushing some buttons.

She let out a squeal of triumph, shaking her fists. "It worked! It actually worked! Normally I stay animated at this hour, and won't change back until nine in the morning!"

She suddenly grabbed me, giving me another one of those passionate kisses.

"Thank you, oh thank you!" And she kissed me some more.

I shoved her away. "We can't be doing this! We're related!"

"_Half_ related."

"It doesn't matter!" I insisted. "We can't! It's wrong!"

"Your penis doesn't think so," she said.

She was right, but I had to draw the line somewhere.

I grabbed a pillow, covering my crotch, but that only made her giggle.

I just scowled at her, pulling on my boxers.

Kate looked at me with a pleading expression. "Don't you love me, Drew?"

I swallowed. "You're family."

"That's not what I asked."

It was fair to make that distinction.

Sighing, I said, "You're my sister. Of course I love you. It just..._can't be in that way._"

"Are you sure?"

I blushed. "We are not having this conversation."

"You try so hard to get me to open up and tell you the truth, and then when I do, you refuse to extend me the same courtesy."

"It's not the same thing, dammit! You're asking me if I enjoyed incest! That's not something I'd share with anyone!"

She looked sad. Dejected. I even saw tears rolling down her cheeks.

Real tears. Not animated.

"Look," I said, putting an arm around her shoulder. "You're the only sibling I've got. I'm going to love you as a sister. I'll care for you. _Like family_."

"But you won't do it a second time."

"There shouldn't have been a first!" I said.

"Your boxers are tenting up," she said.

"You keep those pretty eyes somewhere else, okay?"

"Okay," she sniffed. "But I'm not sorry for what I've done. Thank you."

My hands were flickering, turning animated.

I wanted to complain about this, but...if I fixed my sister...I supposed it wasn't the worst thing that could happen.

I guess I was just trying to justify it to myself.

"You've made me the happiest girl in Cool World. I'm glad you were my first."

There were so many things I felt like saying, about how I enjoyed it and everything, but wrong is wrong. I wasn't going to intentionally commit incest, so I just held my tongue.

When I did speak, I instead ended up saying, "You know, I've got the strangest craving for cold hot dogs."

Amanda gave me a thin smile, implying that my joke wasn't funny, but it wasn't a joke. Something _had_ gone seriously wrong.

I frowned at my flickering hand, which now seemed to be a brown-white animal claw. "You said you can control this?"

She shook her head. "_To a degree._"

My hand flickered human, then animated again. Now it was peach.

Amanda handed me her watch. "Here. You might have more use of this than me now."

I took it, but still said, "So you cured yourself by infecting me?"

She shrugged. "Drew, no one has done anything like this before. I didn't _know_ it was going to do this to you."

She squeezed me. "Drew, you've given me the greatest gift I've ever received in my entire life. I'm sorry this happened to you, but I have no regrets."

"Wait," I said. "All those times you told me to close my eyes...?"

"I turned into Melissa," she said. "It requires my utmost concentration, but I can sometimes exert limited control over my changes. Of course, it was easier to turn myself into a doodle than a human. Especially when I'm about to have an orgasm."

Amanda scrunched up her face, like she were concentrating on something really hard.

Nothing happened.

She joyously beat her fists on her covers. "I'm human! I'm human!"

"And I'm _less so_," I groaned.

We've gone way too far, I thought. I seriously _have_ to get out of here.

"Wait," I said. "I can leave now, right? The rips in reality are dilated and all that, aren't they?"

"_I guess_," she said.

"What do you mean, `you guess'?"

"Well, I know _I'll be fine_, but you...you're part doodle now."

I smacked my face with my hand. "Dammit."

Now I was almost positive that I hated her.

...Of course, _I didn't want to hurt her feelings by saying that_.

Once Amanda had painted the mirrors back in, I got up from the bed, staring at myself in the glass.

And my animated self.

I looked like a character from one of those _Boy's Life_ comics. I still had black hair, but now I suddenly had a button nose, mousey ears, and, of course, a sash full of fake merit badges, a scarf, and a green uniform. A pink rat's tail poked out of my green bell bottomed pants, and I wore a pair of opaque white glasses.

"It like I'm looking at my inner child," I muttered.

Amanda set down her bucket of..._window paint_ and put her arm around me. "You look very cute."

I turned real for a second, then, suddenly I was looking at a naked brown and white rat...with breasts.

Amanda's arm didn't move. "That's, um, cute too!"

I looked at her with unease, then stared at my reflection.

I sighed, and the Boy Scout sighed back. "Do I have a choice about what I look like? Animated?"

"It's complicated," she said.

"And why is he in a Scout uniform when I'm not?"

As if in response, my reflection flickered, and I was looking at an adult version of the same rat tailed Scout, clad only in his boxers, still wearing glasses.

"I don't even wear glasses," I said.

"They're _cute_ glasses."

My reflection smiled at the compliment, but I did not.

"It's easy to see why Cool World has no real psychologists," Amanda said. "Already I can see where your trouble is."

"Funny," I said.

"I've heard that you can modify your form if you can draw."

"And if you can't?"

She shrugged. "I can show you some great places to shop."

"So," I said. "Were you born a sexy comic book character? Or did it develop somehow?"

Amanda giggled. "It developed. At first, I was kind of like baby Pebbles, except with cat ears and a tail. Mom has pictures. I got a little older, and I resembled Wendy the Witch, without the witch costume, then like a kid on _Johnny Quest_. Eventually, I grew breasts, and then..._I was Amanda_."

"So my...cartoon self will change if I grow a beard?"

"Maybe. I don't know."

I waggled my fingers at the mirror experimentally, watching the animated rat man copying me.

"I suppose...it's _kinda_ cool."

"See?" She kissed my cheek. "It's not so bad."

"Uh...thank you, I guess."

As I continued to stare at my reflection, I saw RIffraff walking out from behind the wall, munching from a bag of popcorn...which he shared with Cleo.

"That was _amazing_!" he said.

"Did it feel as good as it looked?" Cleo asked.

Amanda blushed and nodded. "It did!"

"You are _so_ lucky."

I swallowed, trying to convince myself I wasn't there.

It got worse when Sneezer came out and said, "That was great! I had to change my diaper twice!"

For this reason, I shuddered when he handed me my wallet.

"Don't worry. I rinsed it off," he said.

I opened the wallet, checking its contents. Everything was in there, all right.

Well, almost.

"Sneezer, where's my driver's license?"

He just cleared his throat.

"Good Lord," I said. "Are you freaking _kidding_ me!"

Sneezer frowned and slowly said "No."

Amanda smiled at me, looking hopeful, but I just scowled.

At least it's just the driver's license, I thought. It's relatively easy to replace.

"You can leave now," I said. "Show's over. I'm not screwing my sister again."

My spectators eyed me with skepticism.

"Shoo," I said, waving them away. "Go! Out!"

Riffraff looked slightly angry, but I think it was tempered by the fact he already got to see everything worth seeing. "Rest up," he said. "You've got a busy...three hundred and sixty five days of slavery coming in..." He checked his watch. "Six hours."

I sighed. "Out."

The cats vacated the room, but the mouse did not.

"I said the show's over," I said. "Why don't you go down to a park and spank yourself with a paddle or something?"

"There's a fold out bed in the observation booth," Amanda said. "Just pull the slot machine lever."

Giving her a nod, Sneezer disappeared behind the wall.

A second later, I heard him scream like he were falling down a bottomless pit.

"Sounds like two cherries and a lemon," Amanda remarked.

I chuckled. "Was there really a bed?"

"Actually yes. But you have to get three Liberty Bells."

Amanda rubbed my shoulders. "You must be tired. You've had a very hard day." She blushed. "I mean _difficult_. You must be _exhausted_. _I know I'm tired._ Why don't we _both_ get some rest?" Then she nodded toward the bed.

I rolled my eyes. "Nice try, _Amanda_," I said. "But I'm not sleeping with you again."

"Drew," she said. "We didn't literally sleep."

"You mean sleep sleep."

She nodded. "Brothers and sisters do that sometimes, don't they?"

I sighed. "Yeah."

I put my clothes back on, climbing into bed.

When Amanda joined me, I rolled over so my back faced her, and we laid that way for a couple minutes, back to back, with our eyes closed.

Before I could begin to get any sort of decent REM sleep, I hear someone knocking...on a window.

Groaning, I sit up, staggering over to the source of the noise.

Behind a tall window between two bookcases, I see a bird.

A fuzzy blue bird in a white suit top and skirt. With a nurse's cap on her head. And a briefcase.

It shuffled its feet more securely on the ledge, knocking again.

"What the hell?" I cried. "Amanda! What is this? Window to window insurance sales?"

"Open it!" she groaned from the bed. "I'm not animated, or I'd be over there already!"

"It's not a vampire, is it? Vampires always knock..."

I heard Amanda's heels stomping haphazardly behind me. "It's not a vampire. Vampires don't wear white."

Rolling my eyes, I unlatched the window and pulled it open.

The bird brushed herself off, regarding me with a very stern, serious expression.

"My name is Cupcake with National Baby Farms, Worldwide Child Cabbage Patch LLC. Also known as the NBF. Our systems detected sexual intercourse in this location, and I need to ask you a few questions. Is this a bad time?"

"Yes," I groaned, but Amanda elbowed me hard.

"Now is fine," she said.

"Our apologies for this intrusion, sir and ma'am. Due to the (ahem) _unusual nature _of your...union, the NBF sent me to _audit_ this transaction, to make sure it falls within guidelines.

"As you may or may not be aware, Ms. Wood, the intercourse of your two parents was in direct violation of NBF policy.

"This union, performed without prior consultation with Planned Seeding Services (and without filing the proper forms afterward, I might add) introduced certain _impurities_ into the seeding process, which you no doubt have experienced throughout your childhood, pre-pubescence and adult life."

The bird opened her suitcase, laid it on the floor, then did something to it so that it unfolded out into a small desk.

She opened a drawer, taking out a clipboard with a thick packet of forms on it, clearing her throat.

"Amanda K Wood. Our records show that you are part human, meaning that you currently or semi currently possess a functioning human uterus, allowing you to reproduce without the assistance of NBF's services. Being as the act of procreation has occurred..."

She checked her watch.

"Eight minutes and thirty seconds ago, and said act was performed with a non-animated individual, we need to know if you intend to reproduce bodily or will still be requiring the use of NBF and its partners. If you _do_ intend to make use of our services, we will require you to sign some paperwork and pay a small fee."

Amanda giggled. "I think I have a fully functional vagina now, so I should be fine, thank you."

Cupcake looked confused.

"She means no," I said.

"Are you absolutely certain you want to do this?" the bird asked. "If it is discovered that you cannot produce children, your contract with NBF cannot be reinstated."

I grimaced, looking at my partner with discomfort. "I really don't think a baby is a good idea for us anyway."

Amanda looked hurt, but nodded. "We'll take our chances, thank you."

The bird sighed in relief. "You have no idea how happy that makes me! The HDBB 2900's alone take an _hour_ to complete, _then there's all the waivers and policies and restrictions_. The damn thing's as long as the Monica Lewinsky report."

"There's a job for you, Mr. Tax Man!" Amanda giggled. "I think you two would get along famously!"

I let out an uneasy chuckle.

Cupcake shuddered in disgust.

Giving me a scowl, she flipped through the packet to one of the pages, offering me a pen to sign it with.

"Just sign here, saying you two mutually agree to natural human birth."

I stared at the form, trying to make sure I understood what I was reading before we signed it.

It was no use. The paper was nothing but generic Lorem Ipsum text with a couple lines about how we waived NBF services, and blanks for our signatures.

"I'm pretty sure this form wouldn't hold up in court," I said.

"You haven't seen our courts," Amanda laughed. "Just sign it."

"Why do I feel like I'm signing over my soul?"

"In a way, _you are_," she said.

I sighed and wrote my signature.

Amanda, in turn, signed her part.

The moment she put down that last stroke, I heard the ominous roar of thunder, and lightning bolts lit up the windows.

Suddenly I heard a phone ringing.

I looked around, but the bird waved a feathered hand. "It's for me. Hold on."

She pulled out a phone and listened to it.

"Hello?" She paused, listening.

Her face turned white. Literally. "Oh God. Not another one!"

She sighed. "No. They signed a cancellation form. I'll be there right away."

I and Amanda stared at each other.

"Another one?" we asked ourselves in unison.

I frowned. "Why do I think she's talking about Jessica?"

The bird's eyes narrowed. "You know her?"

I gave her a shrug. "Maybe?"

Cupcake shook her entire body like a real bird does when a huge pile of snow falls on its head.

She quickly shoved the desk and everything back into the little briefcase, hurrying back out the window.

"So that's where babies come from," I said.

Amanda looked at me with an uncomfortable facial expression. "That's where they _used to_ come from."

"If you have babies, and they're born with birth defects, they're going to be _interesting_ birth defects."

She grinned. "You said that in a plural."

"_Baby,_" I said. "I meant one. Singular. Unless you have twins."

"_Sure you did._"

I just sighed.

We returned to bed, I and Amanda once again sleeping with our backs to each other.

We slept that way.

Well, so maybe after the first hour she had her arms around me, but nothing happened.

Nothing _physically_.

Mentally, though, I was going on the cartoon equivalent of a bad acid trip, one where past memories become dumb looking cartoons with depressing, unfunny plot twists.

I'm the cartoon Boy Scout, doing the dishes in the kitchen. I accidentally break one of the dishes. Mom's boyfriend comes in and beats the hell out of me. Says I broke them on purpose.

He's choking me. Doing that sleeper hold thing where you pinch the pressure point until you black out. I see stars.

And Extra.

When I awake, I'm the female rat, and I'm holding hands with _someone_...I can't quite see...and then I'm in a bedroom, crying, and this vague..._someone _is yelling at me, saying that because I signed that form, we can't have babies, and it's all my fault for screwing my sister.

It feels so real that I sit up, gasping and panting...

And that's when I notice that I have claws for feet, and I'm dressed in a red kimono.

"What's the matter, honey?" Amanda moaned groggily.

"I...I...I had a nightmare," I cried in a voice several octaves higher than it should be.

Amanda's eyes flew open, taking in my unusual body configuration with startled surprise. "What?"

"I don't know! You tell me!"

My hands and body flickered, then returned to normal.

"You just had a nightmare," she said. "It happens."

"What do you mean, it happens?" I cried. "The transformation?"

"Sometimes." She shut her eyes.

"So I could go to bed and wake up a rat woman."

"Yes," she sighed. "Go back to sleep."

Easier said than done.

I just laid there, staring at the ceiling.


	27. Chapter 27: HDBB 2900

He dammed my beaver.

It turns out that his large kangaroo feet weren't an accurate measurement of what was in his thong, _but it was close_.

I'm absolutely certain there are no circumcisions done in comics _or cartoons_, but, well, he had been drawn like they were.

The sensation of him inside me was...a little hard, I mean, _difficult_ to describe. It wasn't like flesh. It was, well, paint. So, it felt kind of slick and plastic-like, more or less.

I _love_ slick and plastic-like. In fact, I have a few hidden in drawers. And then there's my Hello Kitty battery powered toothbrush...

Anyway.

So he's enjoying himself, _I'm_ enjoying myself, and the beaver, well, he's got his eyes shut, buzzing away. I decided to just ignore him and slap him a few times when he _got carried away_.

I pulled hard on Chad's tail and chewed on his ears, biting until it drew blood. He whimpered, but...it was still business as usual between his legs.

I got sick of the ball gag, tortured him by just sitting on him while I unfastened it, then got going again, involving our mouths this time.

A couple times, one or both of Chad's hands would pop out of the handcuffs and grab my butt. When I asked him about it, he said he was able to do that "Because it was funny."

I said it was sexier than it was funny, but he replied that it was funny _to him_. I'd say that explains why I didn't laugh when I watched _Roger Rabbit_.

We got more worked up, things became more urgent. We made weird noises together, sometimes in unison.

At one point, I got a little too carried away.

"Oh yes," I had cried, my toes curling in ecstasy. "Booga!"

Chad froze suddenly, looking upset. I actually felt him _shrivel inside me_. "Why did you call me that?"

I swallowed. "You look like him. That's all. I swear. I've only seen him as a two dimensional image. On paper. And you're way cuter. I promise I'll never call you that again."

I put his ear in my mouth, gnawing on it with my teeth, my hand yanking his tail. "You can't do _this_ with a comic book."

"Si," he said. "And neither can you this." He explored my mouth, gripping my buttocks as he thrust himself into me.

I must have made some weird noises, for I heard him saying, "Your birdsong is like a chipmunk and a small bear attacking a parakeet with their genitals. I like it."

I giggled, making that noise again.

Our movements increased at a frenzied rate, rising and falling, gasping and moaning,

And then...

And then...

And then something literally exploded.

At first, we just hit a climax. I just hit the top of that final downhill slide, Chad under me looking..._ready as he'll ever be_, and then two things happen at once.

First, I hear Chad moaning in pleasure as something that feels like paint gushes into me.

How do I know how it feels to have paint up there? I'm an artist and I _experiment_ with paint. _Martian Kissing Gardens_ Number 1 to 10 (acrylic on canvas). They should still be on display at the Belger Art Space if you want to see them.

Anyways.

A second later, as I'm hitting my own pleasurable release, the entire room lights up.

In fact, my body lights up, and his, and all the windows shatter.

At this point, I'm not thinking about anything because I'm having the mother of all orgasms. We're just glowing and...doing our thing as waves of pleasure wash over us.

That's when the earthquake happens.

The entire apartment shakes, the walls crack and split, and I'm just absently watching it occur...because I'm _still busy_.

Thankfully, the quake stops, and I slump down exhausted on Chad's chest.

I look up into his eye and giggle. "Did the earth move for you too?"

He laughed.

For a few minutes, we just lay there, wrapped in each other's arms (again, "it was funny"), basking in the afterglow.

My body _flickered_, like a light. And when I looked down at my thighs, my arms, I saw that I was animated.

I had been made into a cartoon! I laughed and squealed in delight.

My sex partner...well, that was the truly weird part.

There was a live action movie called _Tank Girl_, released a few years ago. It had Ice T or Ice Cube as a mutant kangaroo. Chad...he kinda reminded me of the rapper's rather mentally slow companion. The cute one Drew Barrymore slept with.

Mine...was kinda like that, except for, you know, the eyepatch. And maybe his eyes weren't as dull. Stubby muzzle, shorter ears, rough looking hairy features...but soft to the touch. Skin almost the color of coffee with creamer in it. I still liked him.

He would turn real and cartoon at odd times. I, on the other hand, saw that my body remained consistently animated, maybe blinking human for a bit every eight or ten minutes.

We heard a sharp knock on one of the windows.

Oh. He had them fixed. Handy guy.

Automatic window replacement. Chad said he put it in after several home invasions. All he has to do is twist the eye of the tentacled thing on the bed, and a new set rolls up in place of the broken ones.

...Or breaks the existing ones if you do something weird in your sleep. He says he's done both.

Someone kept knocking.

"Owl Woman?" I asked.

"I...do not think so," Chad said. "Owl Woman has _tools_. That is how she got rid of the bomb (Owl Woman Issue 12-Ed) and leaves me birthday and Christmas presents."

He actually _said_ the editorial insert.

I frowned at him. "Owl Woman seems...very strange."

"She is," he said. "But I am happy that she cares."

The knocking got louder, and I heard a female voice crying, "_Excuse me_!"

I dismounted my `steed', stomping to the window, where a humanoid female bluebird stood in a nurse's uniform with a briefcase clutched in one feathered hand.

"We're busy," I yelled.

The bird put a paw on her hip, giving me this, "Now really" look.

With a sigh, I opened the window, and she stepped in, touching up her brown hair.

The bird cleared her throat. "My name is Cupcake with National Baby Farms, Worldwide Child Cabbage Patch LLC. Also known as the NBF. Our systems detected sexual intercourse in this location, and I need to ask you a few questions. Is this a bad time?"

"No, no," I said with a grin. "This is a _wonderful_ time."

She unfolded her briefcase into a desk, and a very strange conversation followed.

Apparently all cartoons are born in a cabbage patch, and we violated something or another, so we had to fill out forms if we wanted a baby. After all, Chad probably only filled me with paint.

"Oh please let me register!" I cried. "This would be like a dream come true!"

Cupcake gave me this ugly look, then handed me a giant stack of papers to sign. I was told there would be a fee as well, but Chad said not to worry about it.

It was called the HDBB 2900, and it was huge. I almost wished Drew were there to walk me through it, because the bird was a little short tempered, and Chad didn't understand any more about the thing than I did.

We must have filled out paperwork for hours. While we did this, I heard thunder rumbling so much I thought it would flash flood.

The paperwork was..._rather personal_. I had to tell her my family ancestry, which of course I didn't know all the way back, my place of employment, the amount of times I intended to sleep with Chad, whether or not I would seek other partners in the future...I'm not sure there was anything about me Cupcake didn't eventually learn through the course of this ridiculously huge packet of paperwork.

Somewhere near the end of all this, Cupcake reached into a pocket, taking out a long syringe with an even longer needle. "You may find the next stage of the process rather...unpleasant, but it is necessary for successful infant production."

"You're taking a blood sample?"

"Yes, Ms..."

"Malley," I said.

But then I glanced at Chad. "..._Buckthorn_."

Chad blushed. "So your answer is yes? You _will_ marry me?"

I nodded.

Cupcake cleared her throat. "Very well, then, Ms. Malleybuckthorn. I'm going to need a blood sample, a pint right now, but we'll need another one later."

"What is this for?" I asked.

"We need it to combine your genetic material with that of your..._fiancee_." She said the last word with an expression of distaste. "We've used a similar method with other parties, and it has worked successfully."

"Why don't you just take some of my ovaries?" I suggested.

The bird blinked several times, then stared at me in bafflement.

"What are those."

"Seriously?" I said. "You don't know?"

"Information of that nature is above my pay grade, Ms. Malleybuckthorn. I was only sent here to audit your sexual transaction. I know neither about uteruses nor ovaries. I only know what Headquarters has assigned me to discuss with you."

I fought down a giggle, trying to remain proper and serious, for the bird appeared to have no sense of humor.

"Ma'am," I said. "An ovary is a sort of _egg_ stuck to a special lining inside my vagina. These eggs contain tons of genetic material, so if you can just _take one out_, and I don't know, use it to do whatever you do with cartoon babies, I'm sure it'll work better than a blood sample. You only...have to figure out how to remove them."

Cupcake blinked like a frog in a hailstorm.

At last she said, "Would it inconvenience you to accompany me to our reproductive services department?"

"Oh no," I said with a excited grin. "I can't wait to see this place?"

The bird visibly shuddered.

I glanced at my boyfriend. "Honey, could you be a dear and fetch me my cape?"


	28. Chapter 28: Dane

I sat up in bed, staring at a wall, which now held my drawing of Amanda, framed.

She had put it up while painting the repairs, and it kept looking at me.

Even now, it was giving me this worried look, like it cared whether or not I was getting a good night's rest. I suppose, as an extension of Amanda's personality, it might.

Still, I couldn't sleep.

I was expected at work this coming Monday.

My car was parked at the funeral home.

I would have to get a new license, speak to the hotel manager about damages, try not to go to jail.

My rent was due in a week.

I had utility payments, insurance, and a payment for service on that cel phone in the hotel room.

But then I look down and see little rodent feet sticking out of a kimono.

Can I really go home looking like this?

And Jessica..._whatever_. She was a lost cause. The woman wasn't going to help me now. She was apparently busy..._giving the NBF something interesting to do_.

"It seems you're picking up doodle sleeping habits," Amanda groaned, scooting close to me, her arm wrapping around my waist as she rested her head on my hip.

I'm not sure if it were I that woke her up, or the earthquake and the constant thundering I heard going on outside.

No flickering on her. One hundred percent human.

"Something bothering you?" she said gently.

"I need to get out of here," I said, my voice still unpleasantly high pitched. "I have a life. I need to go back to it."

"Why can't _this_ be your life?" she purred.

"You of all people should know the answer to that one," I said as my body flickered into a cartoon identical to what I look like in real life. "You were trying so hard to be human..."

I rubbed my muzzle. "Look, is there a hole in reality somewhere they we can open, to get out of this nuthouse?"

"You're a _rat_, honey," Amanda said, and it was true. I was now kimono rat without the kimono, or underwear.

"That maybe so," I said. "But I have a name badge and a job, and I'm going to get fired if I don't go in. Also, my car is probably impounded by now, and I have to take care of _that_ too. Real or not, I _need_ to move that car!"

"You don't have a driver's license," she said.

"I'm _animated_," I countered.

"I _do_ want to see your world..."

"Holli!" we said in unison.

"Yes," said Amanda. "She _does_ have a hole in her suite." She frowned at me in my adult Drew Scout form. "Are you sure you want to do this in your state?"

I turned noid. "I _need this_, Amanda. For my sanity."

"Fine." She slipped back into her nearly indecent rubber superhero costume.

The costume had vanished shortly after the...afterglow, but somehow she was able to pull it out from under a sheet and dress herself with it.

"Don't you have anything..._more modest_ you can wear?"

She shrugged. "Not really. They're all animated."

"I'm wearing animated clothes," I said. "The point is moot."

Amanda's eyes darted back and forth. "Don't say the m word again. I'd rather not have that thing in here again."

"I take it that's a pun of some kind."

"Yes."

"Okay," I said. "C'mon and grab something out of Vanessa's wardrobe so we can go."

"This _is_ kind of sweaty," she said as she peeled off the rubber outfit.

As Little Drew, I watched her strip naked and pull a cartoon blouse and skirt out of a drawer hidden in the bookshelves. As a doodle, my jaw dropped to the floor, and I had to quickly push it back in when she looked at me. I hated myself for it.

The dress was purple, the long sleeved blouse yellow. It looked like something Babs Bunny would wear.

She straightened the skirt. "Let's go."

I followed her out the door, one minute clad in a kimono, the next in my animated suit, a Scout uniform or my boxers. I didn't care, I just wanted out of that place.

Amanda knocked on Holli's door. "Mother?"

"Oh _now_ you want to call me mother," a voice grumbled from the other side.

"I had to," Amanda said. "_You know_ why. Mother, _it's done_."

I heard nothing for about a minute. I turned into Adult Drew Scout again. The watch didn't seem to tell me much of anything, except what I was when it was happening. I didn't know what good Amanda got out of it, and this wasn't the right time to ask.

"Mom. I said it's done. _The thing._"

"I heard."

I reddened. Literally. "You did?"

"Yes!" the voice groaned. "I'm sure the whole damn building heard."

I blushed deeper, my animated form turning a solid magenta.

"Mom," Amanda said. "Drew wants to go back home. The tear is in _your room_."

I suddenly turned into an animated hobo clown, with overalls and a hole in my giant shoes. I don't know why. Maybe I was frowning too much?

"Are you going after The Spike?" Holli asked.

"I don't need it, mom. I'm cured!"

The door came open, and dad's animated slut stared at us both for a long time, her daughter especially, since, you know, she expected flickering.

Holli then looked at me.

At that particular moment, I just so happened to be Kimono Rat. She burst out laughing.

"Is this him? Is this Deebes' son?"

"What do you think?" I cried indignantly in my squeaky voice.

I had a paw to the side of my face, the other on my hip. When I flickered, I was myself, in my boxers, doing that same exact pose. This made her laugh again.

"What can we do for him?" Amanda asked.

"He needs the Spike of Power. Only that will heal him."

"Does it happen to be at the Union Plaza Hotel?" I said. "I know Jessica..._my friend_, was looking for that, but I didn't believe the stories."

"Oh it's real, Drew. I _touched_ _it_."

"Then why do you still flicker?"

"I...I tried to take The Spike. That's why all the...doodles came into your world. For a time it _did_ heal me, and I _did_ stay completely animated, but then your father snatched The Spike out of my hands and put it back where it was."

"So it only cures you if you're holding it?" I asked. "That doesn't seem very helpful. Unless maybe you can chip off a piece and make it into a necklace..._or a pill_..."

"You see," Holli said. "What I thought was that if you could somehow turn the real world into Cool World, you know, _animated_, I'd either go back to normal or at least inhabit a world that doesn't care if I'm animated or not."

"That sounds like a terrible idea," I said as Adult Boxer Scout. "But I still want to go back there and see this thing."

She sighed. "Right this way."

I followed Holli to the hole outside her bedroom.

"All me and Jack had to do was grab this hole and stretch it open, and we fell right through."

"Sounds like a plan," I said, rubbing my hands together.

"Wait," she said. "I want to see The Spike. I won't let you do this unless you take me along."

I frowned at her. "Uh, based on what you've just told me about your adventures with The Spike, I'm not sure that's such a good idea. I mean, it's like you have cancer, and you're trying to give everyone else in the world cancer so they can accept you. Why not just try to cure the disease?"

"I'm not an idiot, Drew. I've been thinking about this since you were in preschool. I'm not going to make the same mistake twice. I've thought about it, and I've come up with a plan."

She reached behind her cardboard sofa, pulling out a roll of black film the width of a piece of paper, and a device that looked like part of a coffee machine.

"Here's the plan. We don't..._remove_ The Spike, we simply _put in a spigot_. Put a little valve on it, and drink the fluids that come out. The doodles that come out from under The Spike are pure concentrated animation, a disembodied liquid with eyes. We only need to filter out the eyes, and we'll have the cure."

"That's not going to make us human." Ironically, that's when I turned real, clad in the cartoon tux. "_Fully_ human."

"It will once I make the antidote."

"Are you sure that won't just make The Dip?"

"The Dip is made of paint thinner and other solvents. This will be-"

"The anti-doodle," I said. "I still think it will kill `toons."

I sighed, turning into Hobo Clown as I did so. "Fine. I like your Cartoon Espresso Machine idea better than the first one you described."

She gestured for me to grab the edge of the `dimensional tear'.

The hole widened as I tugged, my hands flickering like a strobe light as they made contact with the opening.

The living room was within sight. I could see all the furniture and everything. A much wider view than I had gotten last time.

It seemed nobody was there. I had no idea what hour it was, but it appeared to be night, judging by the darkness outside the sliding glass door.

I managed to make the hole widen to roughly the size of my head, but it kept shrinking, making me worry about guillotine slicing off body parts...or parts of them.

Amanda grabbed the opening as well, which helped somewhat, but it was like a rubber band. The moment I relaxed, it slipped out of Amanda's grip, and it snapped back to its previous tiny shape.

"Your father and I always had trouble with that one. You're better off using the one in my room."

Not wanting to get anywhere near Holli's bed, I stubbornly insisted on trying again.

I failed.

This time, when the hole snapped back to its original shape, it was gone.

Failure.

Amanda and I exchanged knowing glances. Her face seemed to say, "Getting anything out of this?"

I rolled my eyes.

"You've just made several doodles in Cool World very happy," Holli groaned. "They'd love it if all these conduits to reality suddenly vanished."

She opened her bedroom door. "C'mon."

All of a sudden, I see Riffraff jump out from behind Holli's flat couch, blocking my path.

"And where are _you_ going, slave?"

I shrugged. "I'm not a slave tonight, remember? I promise I'll be a good slave. I just need to get a few things in the real world taken care of first, okay?"

His eyes narrowed. "You'd better not be lying."

I just shook my head. Of course I was lying. But then, _since I was a real human_...

"Then why are your fingers crossed behind your back?"

I had turned back into the Scout. "Dammit."

Fuming at him enough to have animated steam blowing out my ears, I said, "Fine. Just tonight. _Dammit_."

"Don't worry," said Amanda. "He'll make good on his promise. I'll bring him back soon enough."

"Great!" Riffraff said with a grin. "And I'll _come along_ just to make sure it happens!"

Sighing, I followed Holli to the other hole, the one looking into the teen's bedroom.

I pulled the hole wider and found myself the witness of a very unpleasant scene.

It was the girl and the guitar enthusiast. It seemed they were boyfriend and girlfriend, but things had gone south. I missed whatever transpired previously, but what I did catch was rather depressing.

It seemed the two had just finished sexual intercourse, and now the man was taking off. He stood, bare chested, pulling his jeans back on.

The man was not model material. His arms were unmuscular, and I could see his ribs. Someone had even messed up his tattoos. Hideous ugly things they were. _I_ could have made better tattoos than that, and I suck.

Something with skulls, Japanese writing and a rather poorly drawn woman.

His hair was a sloppy mess, though I wasn't sure if it had been any tidier before they hopped in the sack.

The girl sat topless in her bed, her purple hair in disarray. Her freckly chest was slight in terms of breast size, but still feminine. In addition to the three piercings on her left ear, the single one to the right, the lip and eyebrow piercings, she also had nipple rings. I even saw a sliver of gold or copper glinting from her belly button.

"So that's it then?" the girl, Dane, was yelling. "You just screw me and say goodbye just like that."

The man only shrugged, zipping his fly.

"You're leaving because of the baby, aren't you. Because you're too chicken to be a man and take some responsibility!"

"Maybe I'm just tired of your shit. Maybe I just want a little peace when I get home, and instead all I'm hearing is a bunch of bitching and complaining. Maybe I have to bust my ass to take care of you, and you don't do anything in return but sit around and draw those stupid pictures you can't even sell to put food on the table. And now you're going to have a baby and I'm supposed to take care of _that_ _too_."

He pulled on a t-shirt with some punk band on it, The Jesus Lizards, featuring a crucified iguana. I'd never heard of it, but I guessed it to be one of those bands that tries to be controversial in order to increase sales.

"But where am I going to live? Who's going to take care of my baby?"

"Figure it out. Maybe you can get off that pasty ass of yours and get a real job for once. I hear the IRS is hiring."

"Oh, and you're mister high and mighty because you work at Autozone and play your gigs at sleazy dives!"

The man glared at her, waving his fist threateningly. "I make it a rule not to hit women. Don't make me change my mind."

The girl shrank away from him. "You're still sleeping with Sheryl, aren't you?"

"That's none of your concern."

The girl jumped from her bed with a scream, beating on him with her fists before dropping to the floor and crying.

The man turned and stomped through the bedroom door, slamming it thunderously behind him.

I sighed, feeling sorry for the girl, and really uncomfortable about entering the room after such a dramatic scene. I would have yelled something to the woman, but I had held entire conversations outside the rip in reality without anyone seeming to hear.

"It's the only way," Amanda said. "We have to go in there."

And so I grabbed the tear, stretching the opening wider, Amanda helping me to get enough room to actually go through.

When she saw us making good progress, Holli actually helped us.

The opening remained stable looking,but I wasn't sure for how long. I took a deep breath and jumped through.

I fell on a floor scattered with discarded laundry, pizza boxes, crumpled drawings, rock magazines and biographies of rock musicians. A fuzzy white kitten was stupidly hissing at me from the top of a small mound of women's garments.

The woman's dresser's were beat up, falling apart, with clothing bursting from the half pushed in drawers.

Amanda fell on top of me as she entered the room, but Holli seemed more practiced, stepping down onto a mound of papers without losing her step. Riffraff joined us.

The girl, not wearing a stitch of clothing, and seeing all of us freaks entering her private dwelling, let out a frightened scream.

"Oh my God!" she cried as she draped herself with the nearest piece of fabric, a pair of denim pants. "What the hell are you doing in my room!"

Her mouth fell wide open when she saw Riffraff.

"Oh my God! It's Garfield! I _love_ that show!"

"The name's _Riffraff_," he said.

"Yeah," she said. "_Awesome._"

She grinned at him for a moment, and the cat waved sheepishly back.

The grin faded when she saw Holli.

"You!" she said, pointing at her. "I _saw_ you! _In my mind_! I drew you! You were with..."

She frowned at me, narrowing her eyes as she thought about it.

I had been flickering back and forth between animated to real so much that she said, "What the hell are _you_?"

I solidified for a minute, and she snapped her fingers. "You're _the guy_!"

I nodded, turning into that grasshopper thing from _The Brak Show_. "I saw you drawing us."

"Wow..." The girl looked like she wanted to put some clothes on and get decent, but seemed to be afraid we'd disappear if she made the slightest move. "Why are you...doing that? That flashing thing?"

"He had sex with a doodle," Holli said. "It happens."

As if on cue, she turned real for a split second.

"Who are you?" Dane asked her.

Holli introduced herself.

She pointed at Amanda. "And you?"

"Have you read the latest Cool World comics?" I said.

She frowned. "No. What's that?"

Part of me was annoyed that she didn't know what Cool World was. The other part was glad, because I always did think that dad's success dwarfed everything I did.

"Never mind. Listen, can we borrow your car?"


	29. Chapter 29: The Real World

Author's note: I did some minor tweaks on the descriptions on the last chapter, specifically in the section where Drew is sitting up in bed, and Dane's boyfriend's tattoos.

* * *

"You want...to borrow my car?" the girl stammered.

"Yeah," I said as Scouter Drew. "All I need is a lift to the Union Plaza Hotel, to get my keys, and back to J.D. Newcomer's and Sons on Twelfth Street."

"Why are we going to a funeral home?"

"They declared my dad dead. The service was symbolic, because we didn't have a body. But my car is still parked there."

"Jack's not dead," Amanda said. "Why would they do that?"

"In real life, people do that if a person disappears for too long," I said as a human in boxers. "You get a certain amount of years, and they officially declare it. We've had private investigators checking anything they could check. But of course they weren't able to check Cool World. At least we didn't have to buy a coffin."

"What are you guys?" Dane asked. "How did you get here?"

I turned into a rat. "Well..."

And then I explained the situation.

"That's ridiculous," Dane said. "But you _are_ animated, and it explains _a lot_ about my visions."

Now I was Drew Scout. "You're only at the tip of the Ridiculous Ice Berg."

For a moment, I just froze, listening. Listening for the ever present soundtrack that followed me everywhere.

I heard nothing but the uncomfortable shifting of my friends and my new (still unclothed) acquaintance in the clutter.

Riffraff tapped on the wall. "Where's the background music?"

Thank God, I thought.

"I can put on the stereo if you want," Dane said.

"Please don't," I begged. "You don't know how happy it makes me to hear...nothing for a change."

She rolled her eyes. "You're weird."

Riffraff knelt in front of the kitten, smiling and waving to it. The real feline hissed and dove under the bed.

"Wow." Dane shook her head in disbelief. "This has _got_ to be a dream."

I just looked at her, turning human. "I wish it was."

She cleared her throat. "Look, you guys are awesome, and I'd like to help you out, but could you please turn around and let me get dressed? Don't disappear, just turn around, okay?"

"Sure," I said, turning to face her closet.

As I stared at the skirts and dresses and tops through the partially opened door, I got an idea.

"Say, uh, Dane. Would you mind if my sister borrows some of your clothing?"

I thought about mentioning Holli, but at the moment, she looked human, and the long white dress she had on looked decent enough to wear in public. The slit up the side was, perhaps, in poor taste, but I'd seen worse on reality shows and awards programs.

Amanda's outfit, on the other hand, wasn't turning real, making her stick out too much. I suppose it didn't matter with me changing all the time, and Riffraff being himself, but I thought I'd try.

"Are you sure it'll fit?" the girl asked. "She looks a little bigger than me." Then, to be polite, she quickly added, "_Taller_, I mean."

And then she did a double take. "How do you know my name?"

I pointed at the glowing hole in the wall. "I saw a few things."

She suddenly looked like she wanted to crawl away and hide. "Do...I want to know what those are?"

"I think we missed _that part_," I said.

"But _I_ saw what you did _the night before_," Holli said. She clapped her hands. "Bravo!"

Dane let out a sound that seemed to be a cross between an angry yell and an embarrassed sob. "I don't know whether to kill you or give you an encore."

"Encore, please," Riffraff said.

Dane threw a sock at him.

I turned into Adult Drew Scout, frowning at my state of undress.

Amanda opened the door wider, holding a couple different tops up to her chest, some with a _Beetlejuice_ type of stripe motif, the other black with ripped sleeves and a skull over one breast.

"I think I have a large Korn shirt you can wear," Dane said.

Amanda gave me a stupid look. "Noids wear shirts made of corn?"

"It's a rock band," I explained. "But I _have_ heard of shirts being made of hemp fiber."

"What's hemp?"

I frowned. "It's a plant. Never mind."

Dane, now clad in a bra and distressed jeans, opened a dresser drawer, tossing Amanda a black t-shirt. My sister threw off her ink and paint blouse, pulling on a shirt with that iconic Todd McFarlane image of the kid playing hopscotch on a cliff.

Amanda let out a little noise that was almost sexual as she pressed the fabric to her body and pulled it away. "Ooh! I like how this feels!"

"_Oh brother_," I groaned.

She poked at her shirt, as if trying to see if she could move the kid away from danger. It didn't move, much to my delight.

"This shirt has an interesting fragrance," she said.

"It's probably cigarette smoke," Dane said. "Sorry about that!"

"No," Amanda said. "It's _nice_."

I smacked my face. It would appear that, in this world, Amanda was going to end up being not much more than a developmentally stunted female man child. I saw a future of shoe tying and leading her by the hand through cross walks.

I could already imagine her standing in line at the local Hardees, with a transparent wallet necklace like those people from The Home. Amanda had no chance of survival.

Now wearing a Marilyn Manson t-shirt, Dane stepped around me to pull a plaid skirt out of the closet.

"This one's a bit oversized, but I haven't worn it since Catholic school, so it might not be as big as I think."

Amanda discarded her Babs skirt and pulled it on, not caring that other people were in the room, looking at her. The skirt turned out to be shorter than knee length, but it was decent enough for her to go outside. In fact, she looked a bit...frumpy.

"Wonderful," I said. "I think you'll blend right in." Even her nose wasn't that..._unrealistic_. My grandpa had a nose that appeared to be swollen that bad, though not as nice looking.

It seemed I had been standing there as a human in my underwear for awhile, for I noticed the girl giggling at me and looking at me funny, maybe _more than funny, _if you get my meaning.

Eventually, though, she threw me a pair of her boyfriend's baggy cargo pants and a shirt advertising some band called Ryngwyrm.

Naturally I turned into Scouter Drew a few seconds after I got dressed.

"Ms. Gatson," Holli said. "You have something we want under your foundation. It is a very precious personal possession of mine, and I'd like your permission to excavate beneath your flooring."

"Wow, mom," Amanda said. "_You almost sounded real_ when you said that!"

Holli just scowled at her. The look she gave was, "You fool, you just ruined everything."

Dane frowned. "Lady, I like you, but this isn't my place. It's a _rental_. If you tear up my, _the floor, _the property manager is going to get upset and probably charge me a lot of money. I'm already on shaky terms with her. Is there something else I can do?"

"Yes," I said, glaring at Holli. "_Taking us to the Union Plaza will be fine._"

And then, in a lower tone, I told Holli, "Let's check for that spike at the hotel before we violate her lease agreement, okay?"

She looked puzzled. "What's a lease agreement?"

"Oh, right," I said with skepticism. "And your suite doesn't have one. You can just break any old thing you want, no questions asked."

Looking completely serious, she said, "Yes."

I groaned. "Well that's not here, and there are penalties. Just go with me on that one, all right?"

"Fine."

I turned into Hyperrealistic But Still Animated Drew. "Plus, I really tore up that hotel, so it's easier to conceal the damage, if you want to _ransack the place_."

Suddenly I feel my shirt wiggle, and I see Extra popping out of a pocket. Dane said it was "awesome," but it just added to the cartoon clutter that was preventing me from going back to my normal life.

The bird took to wing, circling around me, chirping happily.

"Hey, little guy!" I said with a smile.

He looked around for a moment, then said, "Hello, master!"

I blinked. "You talk? What about your contract?"

Extra cast a suspicious glance at the hole in reality. "I receive no penalties for talking out here."

"What can they really do to you?"

The bird shuddered. "Bad things, man. _Bad things_. They made my cousin into a kookoo clock, and my aunt, they forced her to work in a sweat shop making table legs and baseball bats. Even her chicks have to make toothpicks. _Freaking toothpicks_!"

I pressed the bird to my face in sort of a hug. "Do you know who's doing this?"

"The place is called CC KnickKnocker, a subsidiary of Terious Industries."

"Any relation to Miss Terious?"

Extra nodded his head vigorously. "Your old girlfriend is allying herself with the wrong doodles. Me, JJ and Lamont sneaked out through Hammerspace, but T-Bone and Tito have no sense. They're still with that chick. I mean..." He whistled. "Her tits are nice, but _not that damn nice_."

He shook his head. "You know what my aunt has to do in that factory? _Lathe duty_. They turn a block of wood on a machine and press her beak against it..." Extra choked down a sob. "And they keep grinding...and grinding..."

"But wouldn't that eventually...grind her beak down to a little nub?"

He nodded. A tear dripped down his cheek.

"What happens then?"

"That's...when they erase you." The thought grieved him so much that he laid flat on a dresser, staring dejectedly at the messy floor.

I felt so bad for the bird that I wanted to visit this KnickKnocker place myself and start busting heads.

I clenched my paws, clamping my buckteeth together. A Chinese symbol on my kimono glowed a hot blue-white. I was even growling.

"That's animal cruelty," I said. "Someone should do something about this."

Extra sighed. "Master, it has been happening long before you and Amanda were born. You should not concern yourself about it. I and my family have survived well enough over the years without any help."

A tear rolled down my furry face, doing that sparkly star thing they do in those Japanese cartoons. Riffraff looked a little sad himself.

"Master, you shed tears for me?" Extra said. "Why?"

"I don't know," I said, shedding more. "Why do you call me master?"

"You brought me back from death," he said. "I am now bonded to you."

"Are you really a Car-X bird?"

"No," he said. "You're thinking of my nephews."

I sighed. "What's your real name, bird?"

"It used to be Bubba, but you have named me. Once an owner names you, it cannot be taken back." The bird suddenly looked like it were trying to swallow a beakful of gravel. "In Cool World, you must only use the name you have given me, or I may disappear and you may never see me again."

"So someone actually enforces your contract," I muttered. "Where are your friends? The ones that didn't stay with Jessica?"

Extra dove into my clothing, then popped back out. "They're gone!"

I looked at him sadly. "Did they...get grabbed?"

"I...don't know. I hope not. Once a Rewrite or a Hammerbeast gets you, it's all over."

Not wanting to dive back into Cool World to save a bunch of birds, I said, "Would it help if an artist draws a comic about your family being rescued?"

"Drew!" Holli said. "Remember what I told you about Cool World existing before the artist draws it."

"I wish I could help you," I said as an animated clown. "But I have a life. _In reality._"

"It's okay," he said. "I did not solicit your aid. I am fortunate enough to receive the gift of your tears. It is enough."

"He has a year of service to fulfill," Riffraff said. "He'll have _plenty_ of time to help you."

In response, the bird joyously nuzzled my cheek, making my stomach churn with unease.

Cool World was starting to feel like a black hole, sucking me away from where I really needed to be, and it seemed I wouldn't be able to turn my back on it without hurting someone.

"Are you sure you need a car?" Dane asked. "It sounds like you need to go back and help the little bird."

Extra looked at me hopefully, which made it even more awkward.

I turned into Marvin the Martian. "I can do that..._later_. I'm sure...it won't take..._that long_."

"We have to do something here first," Holli added.

"Right," she groaned. "A trip to a hotel in the middle of the night. _ I guess I've done that before..._"

"Dane," I said as a regular human in my underwear. "I'm really sorry about the intrusion, but I'm glad you took it so well, _and_ lent us these clothes. I promise I'll be out of your hair as soon as we get a few things straightened out with my car and personal affects, and I'll take my friends with me."

"You don't have to go," she said. "I think you guys are cool. Especially Garfield."

"It's _Riffraff_," the cat said. He spelled out his name.

Dane giggled. "Sorry."

"Thank you," Amanda said, doing a half curtsy with her skirt. "It's pretty."

The skirt actually looked frayed on the edges, and the sewing job was coming loose on a corner.

"I've been meaning to give that stuff to the thrift store anyway."

I was now animated and wearing a Voltron pilot's costume, complete with helmet.

Dane led us out into a narrow carpeted hallway smelling of mildew and stale beer. I supposed we were in sort of an attic loft space, under a flat roof. I could pretty well reach up and touch the yellowing stucco ceiling.

The hallway featured only a couple doors, a closed one with a psychedelic poster with skulls and mushrooms and checkerboard swirls tacked to it, the other obviously a bathroom, as the door had been left open.

The girl angrily ripped a poster for a band called Mind Melt off the wall, then used it to squish a cockroach that had scurried out of a crack.

"Sorry for the mess," she muttered. "I wasn't expecting guests."

"It's okay," I said. "You should see my place."

We ran into the guy at the middle of the carpeted stairs.

"What the hell?" he cried in surprise.

Dane didn't bother to explain. "Back so soon?"

"I just came to get my things," he said.

"But he slammed the door!" Riffraff whispered to me. "Why is he back when he slammed the door?"

"That's what happens in real life," I muttered back. "When people say they're going, they don't always go for real. It's called an anticlimax."

Riffraff rubbed his chin. "_If I had only known you could do that..._"

"Don't ruin your show," I said as I became an animated conquistador.

"Who are these freaks?" the man asked.

"It's not important," said Dane. "Get your things and go."

Suddenly the guy kissed her on the lips. The girl kicked up her heel like she didn't mind.

"Didn't they just break up?" Riffraff said.

"Again," I said. "It's called _anticlimactic_. Real life is full of it. Another example: Sometimes you won't have an idea about where to go on a date, and the girl won't either, so you just sit there."

He frowned. "I'm not sure I want to do _that_!"

While we talked, Dane had actually been kissing the guy back. But then she shoved him away and slapped him.

"Take your shit and get out of here!" she yelled.

The man nodded undramatically, marching up the steps.

He stopped in front of me, now real and in my punk rock best. "What's he doing wearing my clothes?"

"You left them," Dane said. "And he was in his underwear. Unless you prefer to see him in his underwear, I wouldn't complain."

The man narrowed his eyes. "Why was he in his underwear."

"Someone stole my clothes," I said. "It's complicated. I promise after today, you'll never see me again."

I probably could have taken him in a fight, but I didn't want to.

"He's my new boyfriend," Dane said with an evil grin.

"I'll happily get out of your way once I get my car back," I said as a rat.

Greg probably would have argued with me as a man, but I think the rat sold it.

He pointed to the Riffraff. "Is this Garfield?"

"That's not any concern of yours," Dane said with a cold edge to her voice.

"The name's Riffraff!" the cat yelled.

The man stopped at the top of the stairs. "Hey. How long is cannabis supposed to stay in your system?"

"_A long time_," I said, making myself look really serious. Of course, I was Kimono Rat when I was saying this. "You need to lay off the stuff."

Dane giggled. "You hear that, Greg! _Lay off the weed_!"

Greg gave her the finger, to which she answered with a waggling tongue.

He stomped away.

As Drew Scout, I wandered into the living room. The carpet was an unsightly yellow color, the sofas battered. I witnessed a mangy calico adding new rips in the ugly eyeball pattern drapes.

A dirty, wobbly looking brown coffee table held visual evidence of the couple's questionable lifestyle. Beer cans, partially empty boxes of Chinese takeout, an ashtray containing a mix of Menthol Light 100's and `funny cigarettes', pizza delivery and Jimmy Johns menus and one of those packets of air freshener that people sniff to get high (and dead), K9? K10? Something like that.

Originally I had been hungry for breakfast, but the air was thick with such heavy odors of old beer, cigarettes, stale pizza and Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers that I quickly lost my appetite.

No sound but the house creaking and central air conditioning blowing through the vents. Glorious.

Amanda picked up a DVD case, staring at the label. "Who is Jackson Pollock?"

"That's a good movie," Dane said. "You want to watch it?"

My sister nodded, but I said, "Maybe later. First I need to keep my car out of the impound lot."

Dane opened the plastic box and found it empty. "I know that DVD is _around here somewhere..._"

Probably in the Land of the Lost Stuff, I thought, but I didn't say it out loud.

"Later," I repeated as Naked Female Rat.

"I _love_ how you decorate," Amanda said. "And it smells _interesting_. It's so _real_!"

Dane rolled her eyes. "I know. _It's gross. _I've been meaning to clean up."

She took the takeout box to the kitchen, throwing it away.

"Um...car?" I prompted, turning into Krusty the Clown as I spoke.

Dane dug through a pile of bills, magazines and assorted debris. "Just a minute."

Greg came back downstairs, clad in a leather jacket.

Instead of going out, he walked into the small kitchen, pouring himself a glass of orange juice.

"Isn't he supposed to be gone?" I whispered to Dane.

"He _does that_," she said with a shrug.

"Not very dramatic," my sister commented.

"That's because it's real," I said as a rat.

"Right," Riffraff muttered. "Although these noids engage in self contradictory and confusing behavior, with very little thought paid to dramatic development or expanding their character arc, we should nonetheless be tolerant and respectful of their unique cultural heritage and not interfere with their lifestyle."

I stared at the cat in shock. "Did you..._switch scripts_ with someone? A full of shit college professor, perhaps?"

The cat reddened. "Um..._meow_?"

"They really remodeled the place," Holli remarked. "I don't think it had an upstairs the last time I came here."

I frowned. I'd only seen the place once, when mom was throwing stuff out, and that was when I was too young to really remember that much. I only recalled a couple of his murals. Bunnies and bikini chicks, I think.

Holli marched over to one corner, staring into a small dining area. "This used to be a studio, and there were drawings on the walls."

"I think they painted over them," said Dane. "I didn't see any when I moved in."

She threw a few sofa cushions aside, searching the dirt and crumb encrusted box spring beneath. A second later, she was jangling a set of keys with a triumphant smile.

What she hadn't noticed was that the remote control to her television had just vanished into a little black hole adjacent to the cushion. It seemed the stories about the Land of the Lost stuff and wavelengths were actually true.

"Where are you going?" the guy asked.

"None of your business," Dane said, opening a door at the end of a little entry passage near the kitchen.

The boyfriend pushed around me, grabbing the girl, sliding his hands down her jeans as he kissed her.

"Stop," Dane cried, pushing him away, but he only said, "Goodbye" and kissed her again.

Now clad in the kimono, I clenched my paws into fists. "Would you like me to intervene?"

She broke away from him. "No. It's fine." And then she kissed him willingly.

"I don't understand," Riff said with a frown.

"If you figure it out," I said. "Let me know. People seldom make sense."

"Bastard," Dane breathed as she stepped away from the guy.

"Snotty bitch," the man said.

He looked me in the eyes. "What do you think? Should I keep her?"

"Why are you asking me?" I said.

I was human, in a cartoon tux. I supposed that might have been it.

"I don't know," the man said. Then, because I was a rat again, he gave me a weird look.

"It's none of my business," I said with my voice awkwardly high in pitch. "But if you want my opinion, if she's about to have a baby, she needs to have _someone_ there for the kid, and you're apparently the nearest responsible party."

"He's _hardly_ responsible," Dane said.

Amanda gave me this look like she intended to have me eat my words, but, well, I'm not too proud to accept the occasional slice of humble pie. If Amanda ended up having a baby, I'd take care of it. As a good brother..._or maybe sister_.

"Wait," the man said, eying me with suspicion. "How do _you_ know about that?"

"_I told him_," Dane blurted before I could say anything. "I mean _her._" And then when she saw me turn into a person, "_It._"

"It's a drugstore test," the man said. "I don't know. I thought we were pretty careful."

"I know _I_ was careful," Dane said. "I don't know about _you._"

"It's entropy," I said as Hyperrealistic Cartoon Drew. "There really isn't a perfect solution. Can we continue this discussion in your car?"

She frowned. "Will you all fit?"

"Probably," I said. "We're mostly animated."

"I can sit on someone's lap," Riffraff said. Then he frowned at me. "Except yours. I don't want anything _springing up_."

"I assure you, when I look at you, _nothing ever_ springs up."

"Where are you going?" Greg asked.

"None of your damn business," Dane said.

"Fine. I'm coming along."

"_Fine._"

"_Anticlimactic," _the cat muttered with awe.

The exterior of the house didn't look that different from what I'd remembered, except for maybe a fresh slap of paint. Of course, it was dark. That may have had something to do with it.

The building was not much more than a bland cube surrounded by lifeless dirt, some astroturf-like patches of grass, and sickly shrubbery that had more in common with sagebrush than actual landscaping flora.

Actual crickets were chirping. Although I could hear someone's car woofers blasting out rap music in the distance, _that was in the distance_. It was nice.

Dane's car was the ugliest POS car I'd ever seen. An old brown Mercedes with peeling paint, a cracked windshield and a roof that appeared to have been sand blasted without being finished.

She had to reach back over a seat to unlock and open the stubborn lock on the rear door, and it only opened forty five degrees. The opposite one, she said, didn't open at all.

The seats were bald in portions, with rough patches and gaping holes in it where the foam padding poked out. There was no carpet on the floors, only bald metal strewn with broken car parts. Part of the ceiling hung down in a loose bump. The stereo appeared to be the only thing on the vehicle that was actually new.

"I want a car just like this Amanda said."

"I don't," I groaned.

I slid all the way to the unopenable door, and Amanda got in next to me, followed by Holli and the cat, who had to sit on her lap in order to fit.

The boyfriend sat up front, with the air vents that reminded me of crappy little jet engines.

Dane took the driver's seat, which appeared to have been padded with a wheelchair cushion to replace the actual seat.

She started up the engine, an uncertain sounding diesel rumble.

"You know how to get to the Union Plaza Hotel?" I asked with opaque glasses.

Dane glanced at Greg. "Didn't you have a gig there one time?"

"_I...think_. It's been awhile." He took out his phone, using a GPS system to figure out the directions.

Dane put on the stereo, playing Ska metal of some sort.

She shifted gears, pulling away from the property.

"Rat man," Greg called over the music. "Explain to me again why you're at my house in your shorts?"

I was real again. I guess that's what brought up the topic. "I was with a girlfriend, not her, things were getting physical, and we got locked out of our hotel room. Oh, and I found a portal to a cartoon world."

He laughed. "If it wasn't for Garfield and friends, I'd say you were full of shit!"

"Garfield!" Riffraff cried in outrage. "I didn't come here to be insulted!"

I shushed him, but it was no use.

"The name is _Riffraff_! R-I-F-F..."

"C'mon," I said as Naked Rat. "He's been nice enough to let us ride in the car. Just bear with it for a couple more minutes, okay?"

"I thought by now you would have known enough about me to understand that I don't-"

"That you what? Don't have any patience?"

The cat frowned.

"Look!" Amanda said, pointing at the window. "The background changed!"

Riffraff also stared at the view with amazement. "Son of a gun! It actually changes every second!"

"Yeah," I groaned. "But the windows haven't. It's hot."

I asked Dane to open them.

"Sorry," she said. "The mechanism is broken. They only go down partway, then they won't go back up."

Riffraff and Amanda spent most of the trip staring out the window, pointing and asking me to explain various things. Thankfully it was dark, so I didn't have to explain a lot. Holli was interested too, but she seemed to know more than the others, so she kept her mouth shut.

Up in the front seat, Dane turned on the stereo, blasting us with a CD of some punk music with really terrible lyrics.

I don't mean offensive, I mean just plain _bad_. One of the songs literally had the chorus: "You drive me, you drive me, you drive me crazy." And it did as advertised.

While the music played, the couple argued, but the music drowned out whatever it was from prying ears.

My guess was that they were trying to establish whether there was still a relationship going on, and whether he'd stick around if she had a baby.

During a brief interlude between songs, I heard Greg yelling something about how a piece of plastic that you piss on isn't proof of anything. In response, she said something about not being able to afford her insurance payments. The rest got drowned out with music.

Personally, that didn't bother me. What I couldn't accept, however, was her annoying habit of driving with her knees instead of her hands, in order to gesticulate at him about...whatever. It was an accident waiting to happen.

"I can't understand what they're saying," Riffraff said.

"That's kind of the point," I replied as Cartoon Abraham Lincoln, with a flattened hat. "They don't want to be heard arguing."

"But how am I supposed to know if something important is going to happen?"

"You don't," I said as I de-animated. "In the real world we have something called _privacy_."

Riffraff looked at me like I were some kind of guru that had just spoken a very deep philosophical or religious truth. "_Wow..._"

And then he just stared at the two in fascination.

We stopped at the diesel pump at a BP station.

"What's going on?" Riffraff said.

My cartoon clothes popped back on. "Cars require fuel. If you run out, the car won't work."

He gawked at Dane as she slowly filled the tank, banging the air bubbles down every minute or so. "Woww."

"So..." I said to Holli. "I just spoke to Cupcake from NBF. I think she was referring to you a few times. Tell me, was Amanda born in a cabbage patch?"

Holli slowly nodded. "They had my sketch matrix stored in the system, but Jack says they cornered him in an alleyway and forced him to give blood samples."

I chuckled. "Just blood?"

Holli shrugged. "If they made him give anything else, I'm not aware of it."

Dane climbed back in the car, slamming the door twice before belting in and starting up the engine.

"If they wanted all of Jack's chromosomes," I said as we got rolling again. "They could have just taken-"

"I've often wondered if that would have helped Amanda, but to the best of my knowledge, they didn't ask for it. The laws of science and biology are different in Cool World. My daughter was delivered by a _stork_. When's the last time you heard _that one?_"

"Never," I admitted.

"I think dad should have donated _his stuff_," Amanda said. "I mean, look at me now. If his _son_ can fix me like _this, _just think what would have happened if he'd taken care of it himself the first time?"

"You slept with your brother?" Dane called from the driver's seat.

"No," I said.

"Yes," said Amanda.

Greg hummed _Dueling Banjos_.

"_Funny,_" I said. "Look, it wasn't planned, and it won't happen again."

"It's cool. Whatever floats your boat, man! As long as I don't have to see it!"

"_I'd_ like to see it!" Dane said with a grin.

And then Greg hummed a few more bars.

I frowned as I saw the car turning in a cul-de-sac in front of a VFW hall.

I turned into a cartoon baby in diapers. "I thought we were going to the-"

"I know!" Dane yelled. "Dimwit here gave me the wrong directions! I _thought_, _if you had a GPS on your phone.._."

"If your friends actually knew how to get there..."

"Just google Union Plaza Hotel, dummy!"

"And you wonder why we're breaking up!"

"I only say dummy and dimwit with the sincerest affection," she said as she turned back into traffic. "Now type in the right name!"

My companions, on the other hand, seemed to be having a wonderful time. To them it was like one of those scenic trolley tours or something. They stared at dumpy apartment buildings and graffiti spraypainted underpasses like they were rolling past Buckingham Palace.

"It's so real!"

"It's gritty! And urban!"

We got back out into traffic, and I changed into a Dune character.

Black rubber suit, nose plug, probably solid blue eyes if I could look at myself in a mirror. I'd never seen a Dune cartoon, but I guessed that kind of thing didn't matter in Cool World.

Noting _something else_ amiss, I glanced at my sister, then glanced again when I figured it out.

"Your hair is _black_," I said.

She looked indifferent. "Uh-huh. _And you're wearing a stillsuit_."

"Was it..._always_ black?" Since I was _wearing_ black, I added, "Your hair?"

Amanda rolled her eyes like I were stupid. "_Drew. We have the same father._ It was only blonde because I had a paint job."

"It was black with a band of yellow running through it," her mother said. "They used to call her Stripe."

Then she sighed. "You seriously didn't know. You never once wondered why this beautiful girl you just met just so happens to think and act almost exactly like you? Maybe even _look_ a little like you?"

I reddened. "Not...really."

"Ugh." Holli looked away.

"If it bothers you so much," I said as a human. "Why did you send me to see her?"

She didn't answer.

"It's not your fault," Amanda said. "I tricked you."

"That you did," I said with annoyance.

Awkward silence.

"So," she said. "About _that_. Can you honestly say you didn't enjoy it?"

"Um," I lowered my voice to a mumble. "No."

She smiled. "But you wouldn't, _um_, _again._"

I turned into a Japanese cartoon version of myself. I could tell by the drawing style. "Look. Even if we weren't related, you turned me into this half cartoon _thing_. Are you seriously telling me you want to go back to the way you were?"

Amanda looked at me sadly. "What about you? Do you want to stay the way you are?"

I opened my mouth, then closed it again.

"I'm used to being..._that way_," she said. "But you...in this real world..."

Sleep with her.

Again.

To change back to a normal human.

Permanently.

For a moment, I actually considered the idea. I mean, it's not like it was painful or anything...

But then, thinking more like a male with actual standards, I came up with a better idea: If I could just tear Jessica away from her kangaroo, maybe _she_ could absorb my curse, and then she could get what she always wanted, an eternity in Looneyville, while I, in turn, could get to stay here and live a normal life.

"You don't even know if it will work," Holli said. "In fact...it_ won't_. If it could transfer that easy, I'd be human right now. After the first time me and Jack slept together, after the big disaster in Las Vegas, we tried it again, but nothing happened. Nothing changed. That was one of the main reasons why we split up."

She shook her head. "You have better chances waiting for the anti-doodle."

I swallowed. "That's good to know."

Still, I kept trying to think up a way to separate Jessica from her animated heartthrob.

Soon we were rolling along the Vegas Strip, staring at the gaudy light up signs on the various casinos, show halls, and other things.

Not wanting to deal with the valet, Dane drove us halfway up to the entrance and let us out.

As I was closing the door, she dug a business card out of the junk tray behind the gear shift, handing it to me. "Let me know if you need anything else. _Anything_ else. Like, if you want to conquer the world, or, or even _get Garfield a lasagne_. Just ask me. It's cool."

With a roll of my eyes, I stuck the card into the pocket of my kimono.

She hugged me, but I think Greg didn't care because I was temporarily female.

Dane turned and gave Riffraff a quick peck. "Bye, Garfield."

Riffraff blushed, too abashed to comment on the incorrect name.

I led my party up the front sidewalk of the casino, beneath the blinding lights, getting stares as I pushed my way through the shiny revolving door.

As with all casinos, the air was filled with the endless beeping of slot machines, that minor C interval that droned repetitively into your subconscious brain, urging you to pull the arm and lose. I was suddenly thankful that Bingo Beaver hadn't been invited on this trip. He would have turned into one of those shriveled prunes that pull up a stool and never go home.

I heard Holli say that they remodeled. The place had a swank lobby with a fountain and big marble pillars and castle-like walls, and restaurants.

Like in every casino, the Plaza's lighting was designed to be exactly the same, day or night. They had the front end tinted for this very reason.

"Remodeling," Holli muttered as she stared at a movie theater.

Holli, for some reason, had become completely human, and seemed to be remaining that way for the majority of the time. I thought it incredibly odd, but she never told me all the rules regarding such things.

I knew it was late, but people were still staring, taking pictures with their cel phones. A few people, gambling addicts or the smart phone obsessed, didn't care, being too wrapped up in their own issues to pay us any mind.

I hurried around the winding labyrinth designed to trap you at the various gambling stations, at last reaching the lobby of the hotel.

I walked across the green carpeting, approaching the ditzy looking blonde behind the check-in desk. I was human, so I figured I'd be okay.

"Hi," I said. "My name is _Drew Deebes_. I'm locked out of my room."

The woman narrowed her eyes at me, as if trying to remember a very important memo from the boss about certain property damages, but then glanced at my companions, laughing and muttering to a young bald black guy next to her.

"Can I see some ID?" she said at last.

My wallet, and the rare and collectible bills belonging to the Professor, once resting in the rather unstable confines of animated clothing, was now safely in Greg's cargo pants.

As wonderful as that was, it did not, of course, contain my driver's license.

I smacked my face. "_It's in the room._"

The look on her face said, "_Sure it is_."

"Didn't Sneezer...?" Amanda began, but I elbowed her.

"I'm sorry," the clerk said. "I'm going to need-"

"Never mind," I interrupted. "I'll see if my _friend_ can help me."

"If that doesn't work," the other clerk said. "Try Bugs Bunny."

He grinned. "I love your cartoons, by the way. I don't know how you're doing that, but it's awesome."

"Wait," the female clerk whispered a little too loudly. "Wasn't Drew Deebes that guy that broke that thing upstairs?"

"No," I said with a frown.

Afraid they might call security, I hurried around the desk, into the hotel.

Once safely in an unoccupied hallway, I whispered, "Okay, who here knows how to pick locks?"

No one said anything.

"Look," I groaned. "_We're animated_." I frowned at Holli and her daughter. "_Some of us. _Please tell me you know _some way_ to open a locked hotel door!"

"That depends," said Holli. "Are you going to help me get The Spike?"

"I take it you have an idea."

She shrugged. "I might."

I led them to the elevator and up to my suite.

At the end of the hall, I saw the damage had still not been fixed. The only thing management had done was board up the way to the roof and rope off the dusty bedroom, kind of like a museum or something.

"Okay. I'm dying to know what your idea is," I said as I frowned at the electronic lock.

"You promise to help me get to The Spike."

"I promise," I said. And since I was in uniform, I added, "Scout's honor."

She touched her hand to the wall.

For a moment it glowed, becoming a giant cartoon hand.

"This is tricky..." she muttered. "I need the utmost concentration..."

The cartoon hand glowed, and she shoved it _through_ the wall.

"It still works!" she cried. "It still-!"

And then she let out an agonized shriek. "Oh God! I'm stuck!"

I grabbed her arm, but she pushed me away with her other hand. "Let it work itself out!"

She furrowed her brow in concentration, pulling her arm back a little.

At last I saw a cartoon hand appearing on the outside of the wallpaper again.

Holli stared at her hand with horror. "That could have been my body!"

A few people had heard the commotion, and were sticking their heads out the door, gawking at us. I just waved and said we were fine.

Holli looked at me apologetically. "We're going to have to figure out something else."

The woman suddenly grabbed Riffraff, stretching him like a piece of taffy.

"Hey!" the cat cried.

"Sorry, Riff," she said. "It has to be done."

She handed me the cat's feet. "Here. Hold this. When you're a doodle, try to stretch your arms to give it extra pull."

We stretched the cat more and more, past several suites.

At one point, a man in a Hawaiian shirt saw the cat ribbon and ducked his head back in his room, probably to call the front desk, or maybe a psychologist.

When at last we had stretched the cat the length of the entire hallway, (and an extra foot when I turned into Baby Drew), Holli rolled him up like a carpet, removing his cap and feeding him through the crack beneath the door to my suite.

Once she ran out of cat, and squeezed his rolled up hat through, I heard a click, and the door swung open.

I turned human, watching with eager anticipation.

Instead of seeing Riffraff at the handle, I saw Sneezer.

I frowned. "What the hell are _you_ doing here?"

"It was funny," he said.

"_It was_," Riffraff said as he dug through Jessica's purse.

Then he jangled a set of keys, decorated with a plastic Mighty Mouse and a Shoney Bear, obviously Jessica's.

"Yours?"

A cartoon light bulb clicked on above my head. "They are now."


	30. Chapter 30: Sexy Squirrel

I wasn't _that_ bitter towards Jessica. I blamed her for the damages to the hotel, because she brought me there, but the half doodle thing was my fault.

This is all to say that I fully intended to restore Jessica's possessions once she got tired of boinking Mr. Eyepatch.

Speaking of which, I was starting to have doubts that she'd be able to cure me, in the unlikely event that she _actually did_ want to sleep with me.

I pocketed her keys and mine (plus the room key and my phone, of course), shoved her things into her suitcase (including the clothes she'd peeled off in the bathroom), then stuffed my old funeral clothes in there with them, for convenience. I _did_ trade my cartoon shoes for my pennyloafers, though.

Since I could only carry that and a couple sketchbooks, I asked Riffraff to carry something, but he said, "I think we've forgotten who the slave is here," and Holli didn't help either.

"We need to look at The Spike," she said.

So Amanda ended up taking as much as she could carry, and coercing Sneezer to carry a few things as well.

I wanted to head straight downstairs, but Holli insisted on seeing The Spike, so I led her into that dusty old suite with the boarded wall, setting everything down.

We frowned at the barricade for a moment before Holli got another idea.

"Everyone hold Sneezer," she said, grabbing a dusty pillow. "There's going to be some _recoil._"

She held the pillow over Sneezer's face, and in seconds, all the plywood went flying everywhere, creating a chorus of shouts, yells and angrily honking car sounds that made me wince.

And then we were standing on the low part of the building's roof, below part of the giant light up `tubes' that went into the giant sign.

There was nothing but some gravel covered roofing pitch and a waist high wall between us and a two hundred and seventy foot drop.

While I took in the scenery, Holli was already climbing a ladder, moving on to a higher section of roof, to the sign.

"Hey!" I cried. "Where are you going!"

"To The Spike!" she yelled back.

I dreaded where this was going, but I followed her up.

My companions, naturally, came with.

When Holli climbed the scaffolding inside the sign, I cried, "Oh hell no!"

She gave me this look like I was stupid. "Drew. The Spike is on the very top of the cursive L."

I looked up at the gloomy sky, then at the teeny buildings below. "Oh God. Please tell me you're joking."

She didn't. She just climbed.

I felt I _had_ to follow her.

Amanda tried to join us, but Holli quickly climbed down, shouting, "Stay here! You're a noid now! It's not safe!"

Her daughter reluctantly obeyed.

I crawled up a narrow metal stair, framed by loose wiring, joining Holli on a small platform.

"You're going to want to stay animated for this," she said. "Detective Harris fell from here. I wouldn't take any chances."

"Wait," I said. "Didn't you..._do something to him_?"

She shrugged. "That's not important. My point is, you don't want to fall from this height as a human."

She was scaring me, but I had gone too far to back out now. "I don't have any control over it," I said.

"Yes you do," she insisted. "I should know. Your father was able to scale the side of this building with cartoon hands."

"He was?"

She nodded. "Drew, I want you to clear your mind of everything, and repeat this mantra over and over: _Oh, what a loon I am...Oh, what a loon I am..._"

Feeling stupid, I repeated what she said a few times and found my cartoon form stabilizing somewhat.

"_The walls, in the mall, are like, totally, totally tall._"

Repeating that seemed to help too.

"Do I have to repeat that bullshit, or can I just say anything mindless and get the same effect?"

"I don't know," she said. "I guess if you clear your mind and don't think about it very much, anything _should_ work. _I think._"

Focusing on my hands, which had turned human for a moment, I said the old tongue twister, "Moses supposes his toeses are roses, but Moses supposes erroneously..."

It appeared to work.

Appearing to be satisfied with the results, Holli turned away, climbing upward.

When I followed, I briefly turned human when I looked down, but I forced myself to focus by singing the theme song to _BJ and the Bear_, then _I Want to Rock All Night_ by KISS, both appropriately mindless.

"They fixed the wires," Holli said when we reached a higher platform. "When I last came up here, I nearly got electrocuted."

In response, I sang _Charlie Brown_ by The Coasters, following her to a higher point on the scaffolding. When I got to the chorus, Extra popped out of my Scout uniform to do the chorus.

At last, I found myself looking up at the back of the ancient looking giant red sign, watching Holli creep across a thin rail to the letter L.

I shuddered at the immense height, scouring my mental jukebox for a song I not only knew the lyrics to, but also didn't make me think of falling off the building.

I settled for _Fernando_ by Abba.

Ironically, this turned me into Kimono Rat, probably because that was the only way I could sound like the performer.

And then I saw it. The Spike.

It looked like an ordinary railroad spike, except for the fact that it glowed with an eerie unnatural light.

Holli pulled the roll of film-like material out of her cleavage, wrapping it around the object.

She then grabbed the top of the thing, giving it a few clockwise twists as she straightened the film, tightening it, twisting, repeating the process until she had formed sort of a swollen hourglass, affixing her coffee maker piece to it.

I don't think I have described the items properly enough. When I stated that it resembled part of a coffee maker, I meant that it looks like the filter that you put the grounds inside, but this one was all sealed up, making me wonder how one changed the filter.

Attached to the bottom of this thing, instead of the standard dripping fixture, there was a pipe fitting, which she fitted with a faucet head, which she also apparently had been storing in her cleavage.

To this item, she attached a third fixture, which looked like an ordinary garden hose with a valve at one end. Hammer space.

The only then did Holli notice the flaw in her plan. "I need a bottle."

I shrugged. "Sorry. I don't have any."

Sneezer, who had been following me the whole time, suddenly left the roof, returning with an empty champagne bottle. "Will this do?"

"Wait," I cried in alarm. "Where did you get that?"

"From that little locked cabinet," he said with a drunken hiccup.

"Just add it to my tab," I groaned.

Sneezer only hiccuped in response.

The hose gushed out a seemingly endless flood of inky black ooze that splattered on the roofing tiles, each drop squirming a little before writhing and laying flat as if dead.

"Be glad it doesn't have eyes," she said. "You wouldn't have wanted to see this stuff in its natural state."

When the bottle was full of fluid, Holli called for another container.

Riffraff climbed up from below, handing her one of those industrial sized metal coffee thermoses. "Will this work?"

Holli poured out the coffee and loaded it with more sludge.

Once she had the lid screwed on, she asked me for another container, but I said I'd have to get one from my apartment.

So, at last, I finally got to deal with the car situation.

I tool the elevator to garage level, and suddenly realized I couldn't remember where we parked. We _did_ bypass the valet, but the act of entering another dimension can be a little _distracting_.

Yes, she _did_ have a `HWOOD' license plate, a stuffed Pikachu in the back window, and a giant door sticker on the driver's side reading `Sexy Squirrel Graphic Art', but it still took me about ten minutes to find it in the dimly lit rows of cars of similar makes and models.

I opened the Sexy Squirrel car, clearing the books and CD's and trash off the seats the best I could, but there wasn't much room in the trunk, so my companions just had to squish themselves in around the remaining clutter.

In fact, I had to remove a couple of the paintings, propping them up against the garage wall to make space.

They weren't much to look at anyway. Just a few paint blobs, shaped like a pair of lips, the other like a butterfly, both with bits of hair stuck to them. A label on the back said something about Martian Kissing or something. I figured it Jessica wanted her glorified Rorschach tests, she could come back and get them, or ask me to buy her some new canvases.

Being behind the wheel felt _good_. Once I had the luggage and passengers loaded in, I was enjoying myself so much that I nearly backed into an oncoming car.

When I drove back in the spot and pulled out, I suddenly noticed the fuel needle was bordering empty.

Well, I thought. No big deal. I have the cash.

We were supposed to have parking passes to enter and leave the place, but the guard box was unoccupied, the gates open, so I just drove out.

It was a little distracting, driving a car when my hands kept changing from human to animated Mickey Mouse gloves to dainty rat paws, but I've driven while fighting off sleep before. The process wasn't that different. Crank up the air conditioner, keep my eyes on the road, will myself not to sleep, maybe pop in an ear splitting metal CD with the volume cranked up if the other things don't work.

Honestly, I _was_ kind of tired.

I pushed play on the stereo, turning the volume to the max, and found myself being blasted by _Skitzofrantic_ by the Insane Clown Posse.

It helped. A little.

My passengers had become oddly quiet. I only heard papers rustling, and low mumbling.

Glancing back, I saw Riffraff poring over some art magazine called _The Review, _which Holli was helping him to read.

Amanda, in the front passenger seat, occupied herself with studying one of Jessica's notebooks.

Riffraff showed me a magazine article, nearly making me wreck in the process.

I turned down the volume. "Sit down!" I cried.

"Sneezer says this is your girlfriend."

When I glanced at the photograph, I rolled my eyes. Pictured next to a series of green blobs on various sizes of canvas was the kangaroo snogger herself, clad in a tight fitting blouse with a plunging neckline and a dog collar.

I brushed the magazine out of my face. "I'll look at it later."

"She paints without using her hands," I heard Holli saying.

"What," I said. "She uses her feet?"

"No..."

When I thought about the hair, I put two and two together and nearly wrecked the car. "TMI!"

And mom calls _my art_ junk.

I drove for a few blocks, pulling into the nearest gas station, which just so happened to be Quiktrip.

"There's more than one brand?" Riffraff said with astonishment. "Is this the shifty imitation of the other one or something?"

"No," I said as a generic cartoon kid from Schoolhouse Rock. "It's called the free market system. I guess you guys don't have that, or someone would have competed with Acme by now, right?"

"Does that mean you are allowed a maximum of two?"

"No," I said, turning into a baby clown. "We can have as many as people can build. There's hundreds of different types of gas stations. Texaco, Conoco, Phillips 66..."

"Hmmm..." The cat became lost in thought, his eyes frequently changing to dollar signs.

"We have zones," said Amanda. "Products can be shown in a specific zone, and not others. And you can't show them outside that zone. I got arrested one time for carrying a Pepsi in a Coke zone."

She sighed, looking back at her mother.

"This is the first thing we've done together in months. We don't talk to each other anymore, and we live in the same damn building. When's the last time we even talked? A year ago?"

Holli sighed. "I've been busy."

"_Yeah_," Amanda mocked. "Running the Slash Club is _real busy_. You couldn't take a break from your business to say `Hi, how are you doing, Amanda? How have you been?'"

"How have you been." Holli said this with an edge of anger in her voice.

"You're only doing that because I said something. Of course you know how I am _now_. _Now you're interested in me_ because my half brother turned me completely human. Ordinarily you wouldn't give me the time of day."

"What do you want, Amanda?" Holli said in an exasperated tone.

"Nothing!" Amanda spat. "Forget it!" She sighed and looked away.

Holli frowned at the black pump with its bright yellow Department of Agriculture Weights and Measures sticker. "Is this stop absolutely necessary? We just went to one of these places a few minutes ago."

I was a blue bird now, clad in a white lab coat. "We have to go to another one, _because this is a different car_! You can't save, _or conquer_ the world if your car stalls in the middle of the street."

"I've never truly realized how frustrating this world can be."

"Then maybe you should drink your..._gunk _and go back," I said.

She only harrumphed in response.

I got out and walked into the store. Riffraff, of course, _just had_ to follow me.

"What are you doing?" he said as I was opening the door, transforming into Awesome Possum as I did so.

"I'm paying for gas. What does it look like?"

I had to push the cat out of the way as a wiry bald headed Mexican guy in a tank top stepped out. It seemed Riffraff didn't understand the etiquette of foot traffic in business establishments.

Of course, I'm not sure the guy cared. In fact, he laughed and muttered something about "Gatito Garfield."

"Dane didn't have to go in the store," Riff said.

"People are entitled to pay at the pump if they want, but after my debit card information got stolen awhile back, I never paid at the pump again. Anywhere."

He looked confused, so I had pull him aside and explain bank accounts, debit cards and the hacking of gas pump credit card scanners.

I made it entertaining by accidentally turning into the Frog Prince while explaining it. Let's just say it was a _little hard to open the door_ afterwards.

If you've seen one Quiktrip, you've seen them all. Most of them have gone to the QT Kitchen mode, which is great if you stop in before, say, _nine P.M._

This one had it, but of course, they shut all the lights off already. It was just as well. I probably would have just stood there for an additional two minutes before deciding not to get a smoothie.

It is a custom of mine to spend at least three to five minutes pacing up and down the drink aisle, eying the Slurpee dispensers, the soda fountain, the bottled teas, before marching empty handed up to the counter with my gas order.

As I continued this practice as Drew Scout, I felt more normal than I had been all day.

Well, until I, as Baron Munchhausen, asked for ten on pump five, with a cartoon mouse standing behind me.

The clerk was a chunky African American woman with braided hair. Happily for me, her eyes were heavy lidded, prone to a frequent dipping nod, causing her to overlook the fact that her customer and his companions were both animated. She rubbed her eyes several times during the transaction, but the exchange of goods and services remained refreshingly dull and perfunctory.

"Aren't you going to get one of those things you looked at?" Sneezer asked me while I was walking out.

"I got drinks at home," I replied as a court jester. "I thought I wanted something, but I changed my mind."

"Anticlimactic." Riffraff said.

During the process of filling up the tank, I noticed Riffraff take a real bag of spicy taquito chips out from under his hat, and Sneezer was chewing pieces of Fruit Stripe gum, also real.

I was suddenly wearing a police uniform. "Did you _pay_ for those items?"

They both shook their heads.

"They're on display," Sneezer said. "Like people were supposed to walk in and take them."

I smacked my face, which incidentally had grown a muzzle. "You take them out of the store _after_ you pay for them!"

They acted surprised.

"I don't buy things very often," Riff said.

I glared at him with the solid blue eyes of a Dune Fremen. "_No! Really_?"

When I had reached ten on the meter, I stomped back in (as an afro wearing Thundercats character) and paid for everything.

...Almost everything. Riffraff had also smuggled out a bottle of Yoohoo, which I had failed to notice until I was halfway to the funeral home.

Upon making this discovery, I immediately heard a siren, as if the cops were coming, but it turned out to be nothing but Sneezer turning read and blowing steam and fire engine sounds after eating one of Riffraff's chips.

I hurried us to J.D. Newcomers and Sons.

The long one story building was closed for the night. None one anywhere around. No car,s not even a limousine. You would have thought someone would have been around to tidy up corpses after hours, but no.

The lights were dark except for the exteriors.

I found my gold Corolla where I'd left it, either due to the negligence of the staff or out of respect for the grieving. I decided not to push my luck any further.

I opened my car and got everyone in.

Okay, so maybe it was only a degree tidier than Jessica's car, but it was cleaner. I only had to toss some trash and throw a couple things in back and everyone had ample room.

"What about the other car?" Amanda asked.

"It'll just have to stay out here and get towed."

I had to explain that one. The weird part was that I explained the whole thing as Chester Cheetah...and somehow I had a bag of orange chips on my person.

Not from the store, of course. It materialized out of thin air, because Chester does that.

"Would it help if I drove the other car?"

For a moment, I seriously considered it, but then I shook my head with a Chester-like ayeeayeeayeeyii. "I don't think so. You don't have a license, and you tend to drive a bit fast."

"_I can drive slower..._"

"No..."

That's when I got another animated light bulb.

Taking out the business card, I opened my flip phone and dialed the number.

"Hello?" the voice was faint and crackly on the other end, but I could tell I had the right number.

"Uh, hi!" I said. "It's me. Drew Deebes. We met in your room."

"Ha ha. Just kidding," I heard her say. "This is my voicemail. Leave your name, number and message after the tone."

"Great," I groaned as a baby clad in a bonnet and diaper. "This is just perfect."

Clearing my throat, I started all over, explaining who I was to the recording.

"Hello?" I suddenly heard a voice saying.

"Hell-o?"

"You're _that guy_, aren't you?"

I nodded, though I knew full well she couldn't see it. "Yeah. Drew Deebes. Listen. Uh, _Garfield needs lasagne. Badly._"

"Is this a literal lasagne or a metaphorical one?"

"I'm going with metaphor right now..." My stomach gurgled. "_Unless you happen to have one lying around in your fridge. _I've got a big favor to ask, and I think we're going to need both you and your boyfriend to pull it off."

"You're robbing a bank! Yes! I knew it!"

"No," I said. "Nothing that exciting. Listen. How would you like to have a free car?"

"Get, _out_!" she cheerfully exclaimed. "You're joking, right? _You've got_ to be joking."

I just sighed.

"You're not joking," she said in disbelief. "It's not a lemon, is it?"

"I..._don't think so_."

And so I told her how to get to the place and everything.

After she hung up, I stood around in that lot for about twenty minutes. I made constructive use of my time by loading everything of value into my car, mine, or semi-not-mine.

I also read the article, which explained a few things about Jessica's lifestyle that I wasn't exactly sure I wanted to know.

I figured if Sneezer hadn't interfered, Jessica would have `documented' the event, and my pasty ass would be magnified twenty times on some huge display in an art gallery somewhere.

"This isn't important," Holli said as we waited. "No one cares if someone turns your car into a toad."

"Excuse me!" I shouted. "_I do_! I exist in a world where there's laws and rules and people that take advantage of you whenever your back is turned, such as landlords, bill collectors and impound lots. It's a complicated dog-eat-dog ecosystem that never takes a holiday, _unlike your cartoon land_. And when something is gone, like your car, _it's gone_. So excuse me if I want to get my shit together before going back to the cast of Merry Melodies!"

Holli scowled at me. "That car isn't yours."

"So maybe I don't want to be a total prick."

"You still love her, don't you?"

I blinked at her, shaking my head in confusion. "Love who?"

"Who do you think. _The owner of the car_. I'm guessing you must. You apparently shared a suite with her, and now you're taking extra special care of her vehicle..."

"Maybe I do." As I said this, Extra popped out of my shirt, floating upwards on one of my rising Valentine hearts. "Maybe just a little. And then there's the golden rule: Do unto others as you don't want a psycho bitch breathing down your neck."

"I've never heard that one."

Extra rolled off the heart, flying back into my shirt.

"Neither have I," I said. "I made it up. But it's true."

She sighed, and we just stood there, waiting.

"This is taking too long," Riffraff complained.

"You're right," Amanda said. "There's no time compression, and we've been silent for a long time. Isn't there a musical montage or something we can do to hurry things along?"

I shrugged. "My cel phone has a trial version of Pac-Man, but you can't play it because it needs to stay charged until Dane gets here."

"It wouldn't help to sing a song?"

"Well, it _would_ kill some time, but no, not really."

But then, as I had turned into Drew Scout anyway, I sang, "Here we sit like birds in the wilderness, birds in the wilderness, birds in the wilderness, here we sit like birds in the wilderness, waiting for Dane to come..."

My companions just stared at me.

"It didn't work," the cat muttered.

Amanda crossed her arms, giving Holli a pleading glance. "Mother, do you love me?"

"Honey," Holli said. "_You know _I love you..."

"You don't act like it. It's always _what Holli wants_. When have you ever thought about what _your daughter_ wanted?"

Holli opened her mouth, but Amanda shut her down. "And please don't say that rubber outfit mold machine. Or Chips, for that matter. Token gestures to show that you appear to be my mother. But do we ever _do_ anything together?"

"You're a completely different generation," Holli said. "_It's hard_ to relate to you anymore."

"What, because I like to read books with substance and actually think instead of acting like a cartoon villain?"

"You take that back!" Holli shouted.

"I'm not taking anything back! Amanda yelled in return. "I have a human side to me, and I can't _live_ like you!"

"And you wonder why we don't talk."

"I try to get you to read things and you don't. Did you even _look_ at Walden?"

Holli just sighed.

At last I heard the distinct rumble of a small diesel engine, saw the lopsided yellow lights showcasing the insect encrusted grill with the coathanger hood latch.

Dane was alone. When she got out, silently appraising Jessica's car, I asked, "What happened to Greg?"

"We broke up," she said with a shrug. "Is this stolen?"

"No. More like _borrowed_. I have _keys_."

"I got it!" she said with a grin. "_You're getting back at the ex!_ Right on!"

I shook my head. "No, uh, it's more like _time sharing a car_. All I ask is that you keep the car looking..." I was about to say "clean" or "nice", but the car wasn't. "_Kind of the way you found it. _You know, in case the owner comes back."

Dane frowned. "And when will _that_ be?"

"That I don't know. I'm thinking she's gone off the deep end, and won't be back..._ever_. But just in case something happens, don't total the car, don't let it go out of service, and don't take that embarrassing sticker off the door."

"What about the tags and the insurance? Or the title?"

I rubbed my clown face in frustration. I really hadn't planned things out this far. "Uh, if you see any bills in there, pay them right away."

I didn't know for a fact if she had paid her car off, or if she were still under a loan agreement. If she had a loan, it was bad news. Especially considering how she handled everything else.

"If there's a bill," she said. "The car technically isn't free."

"I didn't say it wasn't paid, but I can't say for certain that it is."

Dane rolled her eyes.

I thought about actually taking her keys and doing it myself, but I thought I had done enough of a good deed by keeping her car from getting impounded. Paying off someone's car loan and insurance was far beyond what is reasonably considered to be common courtesy.

As Bubsy the Bobcat, I said, "I think her address should be on at least one of those bills back there, and I imagine the house or apartment keys are on the ring. Maybe a mailbox key, too. I'm not sure. I'd look into that as soon as possible, though. You don't want to see a tow truck in the driveway."

"Gotcha," Dane said, grinning at my transformation. "At least I only have half a loan to finish, right?"

I turned into a koala. "One can only hope."

She giggled at me for a moment, then glanced in the windows. "Can I keep all the swag?"

I laughed at her flattering description. "Sure. Of course, I'd keep it in a special place so it doesn't get lost, again, in the unlikely event that she comes back."

I glanced at her Mercedes and sighed. "I guess you can take a taxi or something to get back to your old car."

"_Or, if I like the car_, I could just have them tow the old one away."

"_If you like,_" I said with a shrug, a gesture that didn't translate well through a four legged unicorn body.

Dane took a sketchbook out of her car, flipping back a few pages. "I want to show you something. Tell me what you think."

I rolled my eyes, expecting she wanted a critique.

When I saw what she had drawn, my eyes bugged out like dinner plates.

It showed a caped dominatrix that looked suspiciously like Jessica, and Mr. Eyepatch, in some kind of _factory that_ _manufactured babies_...and they were _tampering with the machinery_.

Dane smiled. "_It just came to me_. Pretty crazy, huh?"

"Yeah," I stammered. "It's crazy, all right."

"Whenever I take out my sketchbook, it's all I seem to be able to draw."

I showed the drawing to Holli.

"Miss Paint By Privates is at the NBF factory," she said with a scowl.

She turned to the next sketch and frowned.

"Cool World's just about to get uglier."


	31. Chapter 31: Vlasic Baby Farms

I turned human every five to ten minutes. I timed it with my phone while I was doing paperwork. For the rest of the time, I was a sexy animated character.

Anyways.

The bird folded her desk and paperwork back into a suitcase, leading us to the window.

I watched as she stepped out on the ledge like nothing was wrong or scary about it. God, I wanted to have courage like that!

Looking completely casual, the NBF auditor marched off the concrete, _and onto a cloud_, standing on it like it were solid ground.

Turning around to face us, she unbuttoned her suit top, and a pair of wings exploded from her back like a springloaded umbrella, leaving her top half covered in nothing but a shiny white bra.

Following this, she unbuttoned the sides of her skirt, shook her hips a few times, and a big feathery tail burst out of her rear end, stripping her lower half down to a pair of panties.

Her nurse's cap, strangely, stayed on her head.

I giggled, climbing out on the ledge. Chad, however, balked at the window.

Cupcake flapped her wings, which, apparently, were still draped in parts of her uniform, or maybe _made from her uniform_, drifting close to the ledge.

"Take my hand," she says to me.

I eagerly obeyed. "You got it, sister!"

But Chad looked very sick and pale.

"Sir," the bird said with the tone of an irritated paper pusher at the Department of Motor Vehicles. "Will you be accompanying Ms. Malleybuckthorn to NBF headquarters, or would you prefer we meet with you for the blood resampling at a later date?"

Swallowing, Chad stepped out on the ledge, taking her hand.

The bird could fly surprisingly fast, even with us weighing her down. My guess is that she may have delivered a few babies in her time.

That sounds totally wrong, but you know what I mean. Carrying around Baby Huey in your beak probably makes you strong enough to lift anything.

Rapidly we rose higher and higher in the air, passing what appeared to be miles of apartment suites on this building of impossible height.

At long last we came to the roof, which featured, for some strange reason, a helicopter pad, upon which a futuristic white chopper had been parked.

The vehicle reminded me of something from one of those 1980's toy related action cartoons, kind of a bulky and angular thing, painted and molded to resemble an oversized stork.

Once on the pad, Cupcake dropped us on the concrete, trying to look all prim and proper as she folded her wings and tail down, pretending like she hadn't flown us to the roof in her underwear.

In seconds she was presentable, and we were led to the back seat of this vehicle, which just so happened to be piloted by a stork and that big chinned guy from _Ducktales_.

The interior of this vehicle was small, but oddly cozy. Instead of helicopter bucket seats, we had white moon chairs with pink padded cushions on the inside, a chandelier, and a little coffee table, which a little asian bird flight attendant soon decorated with cups of tea and scones.

The rotors turned, and we sat in awkward silence, just staring at the generic scenery passing by the open sliding doors.

"Whoa," the stork cried in alarm. "Where are you bringing those two?"

"We need to take them down to HQ for resampling," Cupcake said.

"I thought you were going to just prick them with needles like you did that last couple."

"I was, but the noid girl has a suggestion for an alternative. I need someone from R and D to check into it."

"_Okay_," the stork groaned. "_It's your baby._"

She shuddered. "God, I hope not."

It was the only helicopter I'd seen that didn't drown out all conversations with its machinery.

"Hey," said the stork, leaning over his seat. "_Rasenburby_. You on for the Bar Mitzvah this Saturday?"

I suppose this may have answered the question I had posed earlier.

Cupcake shook her head. "Sorry, Eph. You know we're behind on quota."

"The woman likes her overtime," Launchpad laughed.

"Hey. _I offered._"

After riding in this noisy vehicle for awhile, I saw a hilly countryside covered all over with little squares of bright colors, each crisscrossed with lines, apparently the rows of planted crops. I saw plant sprayers, tillers and even something that looked like grain cultivators.

There was one whole section devoted to cucumbers and other relish related vegetables.

As we flew in lower, the theme song to _Jurassic Park_ started playing, and I could see the crops.

Like the logo for Cabbage Patch Kids, they all seemed to be nothing but heads wrapped in leaves, tended by dozens of storks of varying colors, shapes and sizes.

Beyond these farms, I saw a complex of buildings, set up in a way that reminded me of an amusement park, except everything was baby related.

There was a tower that looked like an enormous baby bottle, attached to a square building with pillars all around that made it look like a cross between a Greek temple and a giant baby crib...with windows. A second building looked like a massive rubber duck, and actually sat in a moat. Then there was a huge factory that looked like it had been built out of large alphabet blocks, surrounded by bottle silos.

"Cute," I said. "Very cute. You guys don't put on diapers and poop on yourself for fun, do you?"

Cupcake furrowed her brow. "Why..._would we do that_?"

"I don't know," I said. "Do you?"

The bird turned pink for a moment. "Our diapers are reserved for ripened babies. Speaking hypothetically, though," she said, clearing her throat. "When you say `fun,' what (ahem) exactly are you implying?"

I shrugged. "Some people get off on it, _sexually_."

"Is that what your people do?"

"_Some_ of us," I said with an amused smirk. "Not me personally."

The bird swallowed. "You're right. That _is...disgusting_. And we certainly don't do that kind of thing around _here_."

Her tone was still and official sounding, but the look on her face said that someone _would_ definitely be "doing that kind of thing" soon.

We landed on a helicopter pad painted with a giant Star of David, between a synagogue and a Vlasic pickle factory with a giant rotating jar on the roof.

The bird led us out and down a path lined with cucumber frames, where ducks in lab coats and glasses sprayed various nutrients and took readings on things like flavor and crunchiness.

While Cupcake was explaining what a Crunchitometer was, she led us to a motorized golf cart designed to look like a baby stroller, and we rode through about an acre of experimental pickle crop, arriving at the (I didn't make this up) _Bloch Building_.

We marched through a fancy lobby decorated with framed baby pictures, gold trophies, and J.D. Power and Associates awards. In the background, I could hear generic classical music appropriate for a waiting room.

I thought the awards would all be baby or pickle related, but it seems they have a sailing club, a motorcycle racing group and a golf team.

Their baby pictures included Bugs Bunny, Miss Piggy, Grape Ape, Huey, Dewey and Louie.

We stopped at a reception desk below a giant sign reading Vlasic National Baby Farms, and a plaque memorializing someone named Henry Blochhead. The desk was unattended...

_...Sort of._

You see, Cupcake _wears many hats_, and she _insists on keeping things formal_.

For this reason, she talked to an empty swivel chair. "Excuse me? Miss Rasenburby?"

In a flash, she was behind the desk, typing something on a computer.

She looked up at the empty space beside me. "Yes?"

Then she was standing next to me again. "I have a noid and doodle couple who have a proposal for our R and D department."

Desk Cupcake: "All proposals must be submitted to the Review Board for approval before being sent to R and D."

Auditor Cupcake: "I'm afraid that's impossible. This is a time sensitive issue. It regards genetic material associated with subjects I've just audited. They're proposing an alternative to blood sampling."

Desk Cupcake: "I'm sorry. Rules are rules. You still need to go through the proper channels."

Auditor Cupcake: "So you'd rather let the assembly line put together another inferior product rather than allowing R and D to experiment on a potentially richer source of genetic material."

Desk Cupcake: "I didn't say that. I just said that all proposals needed to go through the appropriate channels."

Auditor Cupcake: "The baby is due to roll off the assembly line any minute now!"

Desk Cupcake: "Did you take any blood samples yet?"

Auditor Cupcake: "Well, no..."

Desk Cupcake: "Then you have nothing to worry about."

And then Desk Cupcake took a call. "Thank you for calling Vlasic National Baby Farms, this is Cupcake. What can Vlasic do for you?"

She paused.

"So your pickles are bending instead of snapping? I'm sorry to hear that. Let me connect you to Quality Control."

Auditor Cupcake turned around, giving us an apologetic smile. "I'm sorry, sir and madam. It looks like we're going to need to meet with the Review Board."

"It's okay," I said with a grin. "I'll be happy to wait."

Desk Cupcake handed me a clipboard with a stack of papers on it. "Please fill out all of these in triplicate."

And then she answered another call. "Thank you for calling Vlasic National Baby Farms, this is Cupcake. What can Vlasic do for you?"

She paused.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Bernstein. You have the maximum allowable amount of children. If you wish to have more, I suggest that you wait for the children to mature and have their own on a spinoff...Is it my fault you waived their ability to age?...

"No sir. But many would kill to have a child that never aged...

"_We are aware_ that you keep trying. In fact, you're on the high score list. Would you like a trophy?

"No sir, I don't think that's a good idea...I know it's lighter than a baby, but pizzas cost money...

"Yes we are a delivery service, but it's not _that_ kind of delivery. Where would we be if everyone started having sex just to get a vegetarian supreme?...

"No sir. We're Jewish. We would never ship pork products or meat with dairy...

"I was only speaking _hypothetically_, sir. We won't be doing that."

Losing interest, I took a seat in a strange looking chair that looked like a crib with kiddie blankets in it, filling out the forms, all of which consisting of nothing but "Lorem ipsum neque poro quisquam est" and so forth for whole pages.

Being gifted with a sense of humor, I just went with it and signed all the blanks. If someone animated wanted to take advantage of me, I would enjoy it just as much as the first one.

"I feel like a father already," Chad said as he seated himself next to me.

I squeezed his hand. "You'll make a good one."

When I had finished signing forms, I got up to hand Desk Cupcake the clipboard, but Auditor Cupcake intercepted it, handing it to herself _personally_.

Desk Cupcake made a call to someone, informing them of our visit, requiring a meeting with the Board.

"The Board will see you in ten minutes," she said. And then I waited.

I tried reading a magazine, something called _The Pacifier_, but it was mostly lorem ipsum text with pictures.

At least they were _moving _pictures.

In one article, I learned that a stork named Yechzekiel Goldbeak had claimed the coveted Silver Cradle award for delivering a baby to parents who lost their home to a giant clumsy monster, actually tracking the couple down instead of placing the baby inside the demolished building. It was an interesting cartoon to watch.

Cupcake paged herself, appearing at the entrance of a hallway clad in white hospital scrubs.

"The board will see you now," she said to me, and I followed her down the hallway to an elevator, which just so happened to look like the interior of a baby bottle.

"I'm sorry for the inconvenience," said Auditor Cupcake. "But this is a very unusual situation."

Then, as Nurse Cupcake, she said, "This is very unorthodox. Generally no one sees the board of directors without an appointment."

"Have you ever seen _Fight Club_?" I asked..._both of her_.

"No," said Nurse Cupcake.

"And if we did," Auditor Cupcake said. "We wouldn't talk about it."

I chuckled, but Chad only looked confused.

The doors opened, and we were led through a little nursery-like waiting room to a board room with a long wooden table, with windows overlooking the fields and factories.

A large two by four had been hung from the back wall, framed in a glass case. A caption on the bottom of the display read, "Do not remove this pun under penalty of law."

The seats around the tables were all occupied with storks and mice from _An American Tail_.

Chad, instead of being the smooth stud I thought he was, hung back at the door, clearly cowed by the serious looking cartoon business birds, _creatures, _whatever. He didn't say a word.

One of the storks was up by an easel, displaying a concept sketch of a squeeze bottle.

"It's time we expand our definition of relish," he said. "This relish will be sweet _and_ spicy, giving them the best of both worlds. And this new To Go Bottle is perfect for picnics and barbecues."

"Larry," said a fat mouse in a suit. "No squeeze bottles. We've _gone_ over this."

"Yes," said a suited stork with an orange comb on the top of his head. "The rabbi said no plastic, so we're sticking to glass."

"Weren't you trying to put onions in it last time?" asked a female stork in a blue suit.

"That sounds revolting," said Orange Comb. "I'm glad I missed that meeting."

"Plastic does not cause cancer!" shouted the proposal guy. "Furthermore, even if it did, there's no mention of it anywhere in Torah! We're missing out on an entire market!"

"We make _small bottles_," said Comb Stork. "They are _perfect_ for picnics."

"_I'd buy it_," I said, gesturing to the picture. "I really think you guys should branch out."

"And who are you!" the business mouse shouted angrily.

"You weren't invited to this discussion," said Mr. Comb. "Cupcake, could you please show this goyyische downstairs?"

"I think you should give her a chance," said Proposal Guy.

"I _do_ like her outfit," someone else muttered.

"Ahem!" Auditor Cupcake said. "I have brought Ms. Malleybuckthorn to the board for a request regarding R and D. She has proposed an alternative to the blood sampling, one which may provide a solution to the inconsistencies of our previous attempt at combining doodle and noid genetics. Request permission to take her to R and D?"

Everyone stared at me.

With a nervous laugh, I waved to everyone. "Hi. My name is Jessica, and I have something called _ovaries_. Would you like for me to explain what they are? I'll draw you a diagram if it helps."

The storks and mice muttered amongst themselves. As they did this, I noticed, with some amusement, that Cupcake occupied two of the chairs, dressed in a sharp herringbone suit dress at one, all black in the other. The herringbone was, ironically, the R and D chair, the black Second Vice.

"This had better be good," said Herringbone Cupcake.

"It is, ma'am," said Auditor Cupcake, turning to me. "Could you please explain your uterus to the board?"

Bursting out in giggles, I ripped a sheet off of one of those giant presentation tablets, diagramming a vagina with its fallopian tubes and tulip thingies (cut me some slack - I'm not a doctor. I can't even see those damn things) explaining how the tulip thingies produce eggs that go down and get stuck in the lining that bleeds out every month.

The board members were just silently leaning over my drawing, a couple of them (and a couple Cupcakes) taking notes.

"And this is full of genetic material?" Comb Stork asked while munching a kosher dill.

"More than blood," I said.

"The idea has some potential," said the mouse.

"I don't know..." R and D Cupcake said with a scowl.

"She obviously knows more about it than we do," said Second Vice Cupcake.

"It's not like we're going to roll a million down the assembly line," said Mr. Comb. "I say let's try it."

Then R and D Cupcake stamped `approved' on the drawing with a big rubber stamp. I just had to laugh at the absurdity.

"Show this to Abraham," Cupcake told herself.

"Right away, ma'am." Auditor Cupcake rolled the paper up, gesturing for me to follow her out the door.

We took the elevator down to the main lobby, wherein Desk Cupcake took a call from a cat family complaining that they got a mouse baby by mistake, promising that they'd send a counseling and exchange team to the site immediately.

Then Nurse Cupcake, now dressed in a white jumpsuit and yellow hard hat, led us down a long hall opposite the elevators, into _the factory_.

It was the most ridiculous thing I'd ever seen in my life. Chad was taking it all in with wide eyed astonishment.

It reminded me strangely of a Palmolive factory I used to work at.

At one end of the plant, this big dump truck thing poured hundreds of cabbage patch babies onto a conveyor belt, which rolled down to a staging area where a bunch of rabbits peeled the leaves off each baby (afterwards eating them, of course), slapped them on the butt for no reason at all, then dropped them down chutes labeled `Clean' and `Unclean.'

So they discriminate.

The `Clean' side required workers to go through that decontamination shower thing from _Doctor No_, and it was sealed against contaminants..._from the other side of the plant_. We had to wear hard hats and lab coats to even walk down the middle aisle.

Obviously pigs, goats and crabs went in the unclean section, which makes me wonder about Porky's upbringing.

Oh, and these creatures were further sorted according to `dynasty,' as in Warner Brothers, Marvel, Disney, etc. These received laser stamping with their designation on the soles of their feet, before being further subdivided and packaged in baskets padded with silk and stuffed into a giant metal egg carton that a robot arm lifted into...one of those giant carrier airplanes.

The others were shoved into cardboard boxes lined with newspaper and shipped down a different line.

There was a sign on the back wall reading, "No Laverne and Shirley routines."

Mice and storks in black robes and yarmulkes wandered from station to station, notating things on clipboards.

Nurse Cupcake told us about the various processes, the kosher compliance, and the other stuff I just described to you.

They also had a machine like they had in _Ice Pirates_, that drops down and...chomps males between the legs. I was about to ask about it, but then Nurse Cupcake led me into the laboratories.

It was awesome, like a mad scientist's lab from one of those superhero cartoons, except this one had a conveyor belt. Lots of glass tanks full of bubbling liquid, lots of giant computers with spools of magnetic tape the size of car tires.

Okay. This part is a little hard to explain. Apparently everyone in Cool World has a sequence of ink and paint stored in a database in this facility, and the raw material is stored in a colossal tank that never runs empty, because it's a cartoon object.

A machine sequences these chemicals based on stork signals sent by copulating doodles (the energy blast I experienced, except less intense) and existing information in the database.

In layman's terms, this is the shoe factory, and sex is the online order you submit for the two hundred dollar Kendelle Laser Cut Pumps.

The chemicals are combined into _seeds_, which they _plant_.

Floating superhero aliens, owls and robotic storks monitored the computers, ensuring the quality of each `batch.'

Chad appeared to blush as he saw everything being done. I guess to him it was like looking at an endless machine assisted orgy.

So far, everything I'd seen was unscientific and absurdly simple. So simple, in fact, that I started getting ideas.

But first..._the eggs._

We continued on down a corridor lined with framed photographs of storks, to a large executive office with a fancy wooden desk and a posh leather swivel chair (in baby blue) where the stork pictured on the Vlasic label was talking to someone on the phone while munching dill spears from a jar.

"What do you mean the automatic circumciser isn't working! Stop the line and fix it!" he crunched a pickle. "No we can't replace the machine. Moishe, do you know how many babies are being peeled every minute? We'll have nowhere to go with the excess...can't you kick a few down the line as-is?...

"Yes I know. You can put them in the unclean section and set up house calls with Rabbi Goldstein. The last year he did it in July so he wouldn't be confused with Santa Claus. It worked very well. In fact, synagogue attendance is still up...

"Yes, yes. _The Bris Fairy_. God, I wish they hadn't come up with that nickname."

"Mr. Vlasic!" Auditor Cupcake cried.

The stork covered the receiver with his hand. "Just a minute, Cakepan." And he continued his conversation.

"...What did I tell you about the `A' word? We nearly lost our kosher designation two months ago with those circumcised pigs. What do you think will happen if we set up a miniature gas oven? Oy vey, the things I have to explain!"

"Sir," Cupcake said in a stern voice. "_Abe._"

"Not now, C-Cup." And then he kept talking. "Of course I'm up for Saturday. I think just about everyone in the plant is going."

Cupcake cleared her throat. "_Excuse_ me! Mr. Vlasic?"

"..._I'm sure they won't mind_ if you take the kids. Bring them all! It'll be fun!"

"Abe!" Cupcake let out a little Yosemite Sam growl, unrolling the diagram in this face. "_Hello!_"

"Thanks, Pancake, but I like the pickle label the way it is."

Then he frowned. "Why does this label design say `uterus' on it?"

Cupcake pointed to me.

Abe stared at me, then spoke into the phone. "I'm sorry, Moishe. I've got something I need to look at. I'll call you later."

He frowned at the other bird. "What."

Cupcake explained the situation. "We just need your signature on this diagram, saying we can extract these..._genetic things_ from her in lieu of blood."

"I suppose it couldn't hurt," he said. "As long as the batch is limited to two or three, I see no problem with it."

"Wow," I cried in excitement. "_Three kids_! Wouldn't that be weird!"

Chad looked at me uncomfortably, but said nothing.

"Oh, and Corn Flakes...are you sure you can handle the factory all by yourself?"

The bird's feathers were bristling, but she only said, "Sir, I already do."

Nurse Cupcake led me back through a door at the end of the seed room, into another mad science lab, this one full of beakers and test tubes and Bunsen burners, complicated sublimation systems and a Jacob's ladder.

The room was populated with little Einstein guys and Einstein birds and koala bears in lab coats.

Cupcake switched to Auditor mode, showing one of the koalas the diagram with the official stamp and signature on it, and I was led into a small examination room, one which actually had stirrups on their rubber backed examination table.

"Wait," I said. "If you have a setup like this, why do you not know about ovaries?"

"We examine other things," said Nurse Cupcake. "It's mostly for extraction, but we've done a few tests with seed implantation as well."

The koala marched up to the table with one of those round mirror things strapped to his forehead. "I'm going to have to ask you to disrobe."

I sat down on the table, shrugging off the lab coat and hard hat.

"More," the koala said.

I undid my cape, tossing it aside.

"More."

Rolling my eyes, I unzipped my crotch. "It's all open."

The koala muttered something to Cupcake, then told me, "Wait here. The nurse will be with you in a moment."

Chad seated himself on a stool next to me.

"It's really different," I said. "Isn't it?"

"I do not know," Chad said. "But the process of childbirth is really amazing."

I grinned. "I have a few ideas on how to make it even more amazing."

He looked at me like I were about to say something dirty.

I did. Kind of.

"You think, when we're done with this, you can, I don't know, provide some kind of distraction so I can play with those machines?"


	32. Chapter 32: Chairman of the Board

Okay. So is it `evil,' per se, if a trained chimp can figure out how to take advantage of a company's absolute lack of tamper guards and security precautions?

Here's what happened:

The nurse showed up. I expected Nurse Cupcake (awkward), but instead I saw Hello Nurse from the _Animaniacs_ stepping in the room with her blonde hair, high heels and skimpy nurse's outfit.

I didn't remember her speaking in the cartoon, so it was a shock to see her mouth opening and valley girl speak bubbling out.

"So. Like, I looked at that _diagram thingy_, and I guess it isn't exactly the same size as the picture, `_cause that would be huge_, but I'm kinda thinking maybe if I just take, like a _turkey baster or something_ and get at the lining, I should be able to get enough _stuff_, for, you know, _the machines and such_. You don't mind if I stick my hands in your vagina, do you?"

"Wow," I said. "You're really unprofessional."

She smiled and bobbed her head like that were a compliment. "_Thank you_!"

I rolled my eyes. "Do you also function as OBGYN for the Care Bears?"

Hello Nurse let out a pleased giggle. "Have you been reading my resume?"

"Never mind," I groaned.

"Your outfit is so _cute_! It looks _good_ on you!"

I frowned. "Uh, _thanks_."

"The best part is, I don't have to tell you to take off your pants, because, _whoop, there it is._"

I grimaced. "_Yeah. _By the way, why do you know what a vagina is, and everyone here has no clue what a uterus is?"

Hello Nurse looked like she were concentrating very hard upon the question. "I'm not absolutely sure, but _I think they're the same thing_."

"Ahem," said Nurse Cupcake, unrolling a chart. "This is a diagram of a doodle's vagina."

It was ridiculous, but you knew that already, right?

Um...there's no eggs, or egg producing things. I'm not even sure they have periods. It was like a picture of a balloon, ringed with a bunch of...bulbs or sensors or...I don't know, probably something to send radio signals back to the factory with.

"What is that?" I said. "A bladder?"

"No," Cupcake said matter-of-factly. "It's a vagina."

And then she basically explained what I could pretty well guess from the factory tour.

"Uh...that's not how it works," I said. "I mean, maybe that's how yours work, but not mine."

"So..." Hello Nurse said, pulling out a turkey baster. "I'm going to stick this in your vagina, and you just tell me where to start squeezing."

"Oh God," I groaned. "You did not just say that."

"Oh," she said. "And if you see me rubbing my legs together and moaning a little, just go with it, okay?"

"Nurse Cupcake!" I cried in disgust. "Could you please get me a different...nurse?"

Narrowing her eyes, Cupcake said, "Ms. Malleybuckthorn, the woman _knows her stuff_."

"She knows it _a little too well_," I said. "Please. Another nurse. A doctor. Anyone else."

With a shrug, Cupcake threw a lever, and Hello Nurse fell down a hidden trapdoor. "Be just a few minutes," she said, marching out.

"That nurse seemed okay," Chad said.

'That nurse was a _lesbian_," I countered. "I don't do that."

I frowned at the framed advertisement for Vlasic mustard relish, waiting for the replacement doctor. This is where I typed most of what you've read up to this point.

They had a light box for x-rays, supply cabinets and desks full of medical supplies, a blood pressure machine, a scale, the whole nine yards. They weren't any more interesting as painted objects.

At last, I saw the new doctor.

He was an alien or some kind of mutant.

I didn't recognize him from any show. I figured he was either a Cthulhu, one of those weird creatures from _A Wrinkle In Time_, or a generic tentacle rape monster from one of those Hentai cartoons.

He kind of looked like a gray tree, moving around on tentacle roots in that awkward way Morticia walks in her dress in _The_ _Addams Family_. The upper part of the tree was made up of dozens of tentacles, with a giant eye in the middle.

"My name is Doctor Boggerslosh," it said in a gurgling, weirdly echoing alien voice that kinda reminded me of Dr. Zoidberg from _Futurama_. "I will be assisting you in this procedure. I understand that you are somewhat nervous about being touched in intimate areas, so I will try to make this procedure as brief and nonthreatening as possible."

I wasn't that body conscious, I just didn't want to have Hello Nurse digging around in my _intimate areas_. I stared at him in awkward silence for a moment. "Oh...kay?"

"Does it make you uncomfortable when I do this?"

Suddenly a bunch of eyes burst out of his tree portion as a big lion toothed mouth roared at me.

I yelped a little, but wasn't that scared because nothing animated frightens me.

The doctor laughed. "Just kidding. I thought I'd break the tension with some humor."

I laughed, but actually felt _more tense_.

So...you know, I kinda got tentacle raped. But he collected just about everything he could collect _from in there_.

It was a little awkward.

Okay. _Really, really awkward_.

Because, I don't know, I guess I didn't have ovaries when I was a doodle or something, and nobody shut the door while he was probing around.

Worse, I was kind of getting off on it, _because he was spending so much time down there_.

I didn't think it would do any good, but I tried to will myself back to a human state by thinking real thoughts about reality.

Wondering where my car was, thinking about how I had about twelve hundred left on that car loan, and a hundred dollar unpaid speeding ticket, wondering how long I can disappear from the job before being considered a `no-call-no show'.

Not that I cared that much about those things anymore, it was just, well, like thinking happy thoughts in _Peter Pan_, except in reverse.

I guess in between that and reliving memories of ad agencies humiliating me before giving me the standard "Don't call us, we'll call you" routine, Doctor Boggerslosh managed to get the samples he needed, sucking them out with one of those dentist's vacuums.

I was almost disappointed when he backed away to put the samples in test tubes, because, you know, I was getting kind of worked up.

I supposed I could resolve the matter later with Chad, or the Beaver.

Doctor Boggerslosh waddled out.

"Thank you," said Nurse Cupcake. "We'll let you know if we need anything else."

"Uh, no hurry," I said. "But when should I be expecting my baby?"

She marched up to a koala, muttering something to him about the situation.

People in Cool World whisper a little too loudly, so I could understand many parts of the conversation.

They didn't know the turnaround time. The koala was suggesting a day to six months.

Good Lord, I thought. Please don't let it be a day! That wouldn't be enough time to prepare for anything!

The bird turned to me, giving an apologetic smile. "I'm very sorry, but we're not sure yet. It could be -"

"I heard," I interrupted. "We'll uh..."

I glanced at my kinda-sorta fiancee. "We'll just _hang out_ until then."

"Would you like for me to fly you home?"

"No, no," I said. "It's uh, _good weather for a walk_."

Chad gave her a cheesy grin.

"_We'll let ourselves out_," I continued. "I think I can find the way on my own."

"For security purposes," Nurse Cupcake said. "I must accompany you."

"Fine, fine," I sighed, momentarily wondering if my estimation of intelligence of their operation was incorrect.

She made me put the lab coat and hard hat back on, and I was led through the plant once more.

"Wait," I said as we neared the end of the assembly floor. "I gotta go to the bathroom."

"Come with me to the lobby," she said, but I acted like I was going to burst right then and there.

"I don't think I can hold it."

My deception worked. She leads me past a punch clock to the employee restrooms.

They were like locker rooms, basically, with lockers and shower heads along the walls, occupied by a flock of female birds, and a few mice.

Like the locker rooms they have in movies, the girls giggled as they slapped each other with towels, while others showered alone, seductively lathering themselves with soap.

Nurse Cupcake was still following me, so I crept into a stall and typed this entry.

When finished, I actually used the toilet.

I could see her feet below the door, so I waited a moment, and said, "There's no toilet paper."

It was a lie, but _whatever_.

When she didn't reply, I stood on the can and looked over the door.

She had put a pair of fake feet in front of the door, with a little alarm bell tied to the handle.

I instead sneaked under the stall into the one adjacent, and found myself brushing the legs of Hello Nurse.

"i would have preferred if you knocked," she said. "But this is okay too. Did you change your mind about _that thing_?"

"Bleah!" I cried, scuttling into the locker room.

The moment I stood up, I noticed a seagull pulling off her face to reveal an iguana's head.

She, or rather he set aside its lab coat, gloves and ID badge in such an exaggerated fashion that it seemed to be saying, "Hey, Jessica! Come over here and take my things!"

I'm not positive, but I believe I was looking at Me Too Me Too Iguana, from some children's book or another. I guess if he desperately wanted to be a zebra or an elephant, it didn't surprise me that he wanted to change sexes as well. Kind of like Bruce Jenner.

So...he...it...hopped in the shower, _leaving his stuff behind_.

When his back was turned, I swiped the mask, gloves and the badge. Me Too didn't seem to care.

Right away, I put the mask on my face, and it snapped to the shape of my head.

In the mirror, I saw a seagull blinking at me.

"Awesome," I said as I watched my animated beak moving.

I put on the badge and scuttled outside.

I found Chad sitting on the floor, frowning at Nurse Cupcake, who stood blowing floating elephants and other shapes out of a cigarette.

I waddled up to them, lowering my voice in attempts to make it sound different. "_Excuse me_. I was just speaking to a _noid lady_ in the restroom, and she said she has _explosive __diarrhea_ and _won't be coming out for awhile_. She said it's so nasty she might even need to _take a shower afterwards_, so she said she'll _meet you outside_ when she's all done."

Chad looked disgusted. "I believe this is called Too Much Information?"

Nurse Cupcake frowned, eying me with suspicion.

"You must be _incredibly busy_ with running the plant and all," I said. "How about I take _this gentleman_ outside to meet her?"

I felt myself turn human for a moment, but the bird mask was perfect, hiding the change.

The bird's brow furrowed. "I _am_ busy..."

"Well then!" I said, clapping my gloved hands. "Let's go, Mister..."

"Buckthorn," Chad said, looking confused.

I took his hand, leading him into the factory.

As we neared the cabbage unwrappers, Chad stopped me and said, "You seem very familiar to me somehow."

"I should," I said in my normal voice. "You gave me an orgasm that blew out the windows."

"Impossible," he said. "_I didn't sleep with a bird_, I slept with a _noid_!"

"You idiot!" I hissed. "It's me, Jessica!"

His eyes widened. "So now you turn into a bird?"

Sighing in frustration, I just gave him a nod.

I pulled him behind a mine cart labeled `Rejects,' briefly wondering what kind of rejects they would be throwing in there.

"Did you find a good distraction?" I asked.

Chad shrugged. "I have _a few ideas._"

"Fire away," I said eagerly.

He didn't make any stupid jokes, he just showed me what he found. One more reason why I love him.

Chad took me to the punch clock, pointing at it.

Of course it _had_ to be one of those old ones with the paper card. It brought back memories of old Looney Tunes episodes where the Coyote, blackened from dynamite, clocks out and says, "Goodnight, George" to the sheepdog or whatever, like getting blown up was something he only did for eight hours a day.

"So what?" I said. "I have one at my work, and _it's digital_."

"It's a time clock," Chad said.

I only said, "So?"

"A _time _clock," he repeated.

I frowned. "Your point being?"

So he moves the hour hand from 9:45 to 10:00.

"Section A break!" a pelican shouted. "Be back in fifteen!"

The line stopped. Cabbage babies cried in a pile by the dumper.

"I am sick to death of this cabbage," one of the rabbits complained, lighting up a cartoon cigarette.

"You can't stuff a baby in a carrot," said another.

"That's why I brought Hidden Valley Ranch salad dressing," said a third, waving a bottle with an oddly conspicuous label.

"Hey, hey," a stork said, waving away a cloud of smoke shaped like a bikini clad rabbit. "You know the rules. Take that shit outside."

The rabbit extinguished his cigarette.

I laughed. "Okay then!"

I turned the hand to twelve, expecting the lights to shut off and everyone to go home, but the only change I saw was on the calendar next to the clock, and the change of employees working the line.

One of the rabbits checked something above a machine, then frowned. "It's midnight, boss! When can I go?"

"You know the drill, Steve. You can't go until Team B relieves you."

"It doesn't feel that late," said Hidden Valley rabbit. "I need the hours anyway."

And they just kept trucking along.

I stared at the calendar, which had automatically torn off the previous page by itself.

Monday July 20, it said.

Nobody checked their watch.

Nobody questioned how break time was immediately followed by an end of shift change.

Hmmm...

"If I dood it, I get a whipping," I said in hushed tones, glancing back and forth. "I dood it!"

I spun the hour hand around and around and around. The calendar turned from Tuesday to Wednesday.

I heard grumbling about nobody coming to relieve this or that team, that someone owed them overtime pay. The bosses on the line promised they'd forward their request to H.R. for approval.

"It doesn't feel like we've been here three days," one of the sorters yelled.

To this a bird complained, "Speak for yourself. It feels like I've been working here an eternity!"

Suppressing a giggling fit, I turned the hour ahead a couple more days.

Thursday...

Friday...

..._Shabbat? _

Not Saturday. _Shabbat. _That's what the calendar actually said.

Someone pulled the tail on that pterodactyl thing from _The Flintstones_, causing it to make that characteristic screech.

"Shabbat!" the bosses were yelling. "Start wrapping it up!"

The lights started shutting down. Rabbits and storks literally wrapped babies up in cellophane.

I just had to laugh. I couldn't help it.

Fortunately, nobody heard me. I ducked back behind the Reject bin, watching birds waddling out the door, switching their hard hats for yarmulkes as they did so. I was cracking up so much I had to bite my hand to keep from giving away my position.

Those gloves taste funny.

When I thought about _that_, I nearly lost it.

Soon, the place was dead.

Empty.

All clear.

"Yes!" I cried.

The first thing I did was throw off my disguise and lab coat, hopping up on the conveyor belt to look at all the babies. _And the Reject bin_.

The discards seemed rather arbitrary. Sure, a few of them had no faces, or arms, or maybe had a few questionable design elements, but I thought a few of them deserved a second chance.

At last. Some creative control.

I cherry picked through the babies, throwing away anything that didn't look aesthetically pleasing into the Reject bin. That's what it's there for, right?

I also threw a few of the rejects back, like a cat with flower petals around its head, and a face on its stomach. I think that's _unique_.

As I rummaged through the piles of cabbages, and the stripped ones ready for the sorter, I realized how enormous an undertaking this actually was. To make this place halfway decent, I'd have to dump an enormous quantity of animated shit.

Honestly. The stuff these animation studios come up with these days.

I kept the Gansito and Bimbo bakery characters, because they're awesomely styled after classic Disney cartoons. Call me biased.

I threw away several Dexter's Lab/Spongebob/Fairly Oddparents type characters, with their angular bodies and lazy sloppily drawn limbs, the bastardized Rocky and Bullwinkle types, I even threw out a few Pixar-esque creations, because, well, using a computer to draw an entire movie requires no skill.

_The digital vat_. I saw it pouring into the seeds in the laboratory when we were taking the tour. I would _have to do_ something about that little bit of pollution.

_But what to replace it with?_

"Hey!" I heard a voice shouting.

Uh-oh!

I was aware of jumping off the conveyor belt and running, but Chad later told me I did a Speedy Gonzales, leaving a cloud of smoke and blur lines as I ran.

I darted beneath a conveyor, then, remembering my disguise, I stretched out my hand toward the bin Chad was still cowering behind.

My arm actually extended five feet. It shocked me so much I nearly dropped my things.

"Cool!" I whispered

I pulled the mask and labcoat on just seconds before the bird reached me.

I pretended to sleep.

"Ahem."

Groaning and rubbing my eyes, I lowered my voice and said, "Is it Shabbat already?"

Chad tried to move, but I shook my head no.

Nurse Cupcake looked at me funny, like she knew something was up.

I brushed myself off, trying to look sleepy as I put my hard hat on.

"Have you seen a woman in a bikini and cape climbing up on the conveyor?"

"No," I said. "I was asleep."

Airtight alibi. Win!

She looked even more suspicious now. "You're sure."

"Yeah," I said. "Wasn't there supposed to be a Bar Mitzvah today?"

"At four P.M.," she said. "Everyone's going to temple right now. Weren't you supposed to be at Equine Sort?"

"Uh, sorry," I said. "I was just on break, talking with Larry and I must have dozed. You know how he gets when he starts telling stories..."

She frowned, but only said, "Save me some cake."

She waved me away.

Awesome.

I hurried to the exit, nodding Chad to remain where he was.

As I neared the door, I heard Cupcake shouting, "Hey! Pat! Where's your kippot?"

I just stared at her. "A what?"

"Your _little hat_."

"It's in the car," I bluffed.

Cupcake gave me a dirty look. "You don't have a car. _ You flew._"

"I'm...a..._conservative!_"

She bought it. "Oh!" Then she gave me a dismissive wave.

I didn't go to the lobby. Instead I darted over to the elevators.

I wanted to see if the law would really get me for ruining a pun.

The building only had three floors, so it was easy to figure out where it was.

When the doors opened on the upper floor, I quickly rushed out, dashing into the `board room.' I'm pretty sure I was moving faster than noid speed.

I stared at the glass case containing the two by four. It didn't look like it could be easily opened. It had no locks or hinges, like one of those box frames for certain types of paintings, except you couldn't pull it off the wall and get at the painting.

I searched the long table for something blunt, and came across..._Squeeky Clean Magazine's_ Number One Tidiest Business Office Award, a weighty silver sculpture of a white glove extending a dust free finger.

Giggling, I threw the award at the case.

The glass shattered with a satisfying crash, scattering a glittering mess all over the carpet.

"Oops! Guess you've dropped a rank!"

Immediately an alarm went off, which made me giggle more.

I reached in, grabbed the Board of Directors, and hurried to the elevator.

The Board didn't fit in the elevator. I searched for a fire escape instead.

They didn't have one. Because it's Cool World, I guess. But they _did_ have a regular staircase.

The bird caught me hurrying down the stairs with the piece of wood.

"Where are you going with that?" she said with narrow eyes.

"To the Bar Mitvzah," I replied.

"And why would you take the Board of Directors to a Bar Mitzvah?"

"Why wouldn't I?" I cried, delighted at the successful use of pun.

Cupcake couldn't argue with that. She was using that tone of voice Agent Smith from _The Matrix_ used when he got really confused.

"On the surface, _your reasoning appears to make sense_...but the fact remains that is only a pun, and you are removing property from a corporate office. As a doodle, _I'm supposed to accept your explanation as valid because it's humorous, yet by doing so_, I may get fired, _which would not be funny_...which may in turn protect my job...unless they _fire me in a humorous way_..."

I could tell this wouldn't end well, so I said, "Okay, I love you, goodbye!" and ran off with the board, leaving her to debate with herself.

I met up with Chad in the factory. He was still hiding behind the Reject bin.

I peeled off the disguise, waving the board triumphantly. "Ta-daah!"

"What are you going to do with that?" he said with a frown.

"Oh, I don't know," I said, propping it against a conveyor. "Maybe I'll tell everyone I own the board of directors at Vlasic?"

"You are a shrewd businesswoman, wildflower. I am awed by your ingenuity."

I grinned. "C'mon. Let's poke our noses where they don't belong."

I tossed away the lab coat and hard hat, marching quickly through the factory.

Well, quickly until the music started up.

It was light, slightly ominous classical music, like they use for antagonists in corporate dramas, or maybe the ambiguously sort-of-evil people they show in _Jurassic Park_.

I decided to time my steps to the music, just for fun, but it made me think of graduating school, which annoyed me.

I opened a door, and found a room containing nothing but stacks and stacks of cloth and plastic diapers. I closed the door slightly, intending to check the next door down.

"Stop right there," I heard Cupcake shouting.

I spun around and saw the bird now had on a security guard uniform, and she was pointing a _banana_ at me.

I laughed. "Careful. It might go off."

"They won't let me carry a real one."

I snickered. "A real banana?"

"No, a gun, stupid."

"That's tragic," I said. "It really is."

I opened the door wider, looking shocked. "Did you see this? It's _a room full of diapers_!"

"Where!" Cupcake cried, but then scowled. "I knew that."

I chuckled, then I pounced. "You know..._nobody's here_. I didn't see any security cameras, so I don't think anyone would notice if you, I don't know, _tried one on_?"

She visibly swallowed. "And why would I do that?"

I grinned. "Please. I _could tell_ you dug the whole adult baby thing."

I stepped closer to her, making her instinctively retreat. "You want to dress up in baby things and let someone else nanny you."

"N-no," she said, backing away further.

I closed the gap. "It's okay. _It's just us_. If you're into it, _we won't mind, _will we, Chad?"

My boyfriend shrugged. I guessed he didn't get it, either.

Heck, _I_ didn't get it, but I understood _enough_. "You want someone to clean you up after you make a mess and sprinkle your bum with powder."

"That sounds gross," Chad said.

The bird blushed. "Not..._that_ gross."

I giggled, waving at the open door. "If you like it so much, you really should try one on."

The bird glanced back and forth, presumably to see if anyone else was watching, then tiptoed stealthily through the door, closing it behind her.

Now, around certain doors, like the one to the board room, and _some others_, the builders had bolted a pair of decorative metal stork heads.

These stork heads faced with their beaks pointing downwards, but the ones around the diaper room door appeared to be loose enough to turn around with a little effort. Better still, these beaks stuck out from the wall at a distance of roughly three or four inches.

I think you can probably guess where this is going. Thanks to the Board of Directors, I had an instant barricade.

"Good luck on the pooping," I called.

Then I clapped and rubbed my hands together. "All right, Chad. Let's make some babies!"

In response, Chad made that loud swallowing "Ulp" sound they always do in cartoons.


	33. Chapter 33: House Party

Holli turned to the next page in the sketchbook and frowned. "We have to go back."

"The world's always getting destroyed in comic books," I said. "_We'll live._"

"When have you seen a comic where the villain literally destroys the earth?"

"Oh?" I said. "Quite a bit. _The Walking Dead, Crisis on Infinite Earths, Hitchhiker's Guide_, probably a bunch of others...Especially in Japanese cartoons. They either destroy a huge section of the world, wipe out all life on the planet, or blow up the planet.

"Plus she's only messing with, what, _babies_? Maybe that's where X-Mutants come from in the first place."

She looked at me uneasily, but I didn't care. When the world ends in a comic book, it's called _entertainment_, possibly _trivia_.

"You guys are acting like this stuff is real," Dane said.

"It is," I replied.

Dane chuckled. "_Wow._"

I explained what Holli told me about channeling cartoon characters.

She just shook her head. "Wow. If I didn't see you actually animated and glowing, I'd say you were crazy."

Holli ripped off a drawing, stuffing it in her cleavage.

"You guys can keep those. In fact, I could make some more and _ink_ them if you want."

I stared at Dane for a moment, giving it some thought. "Pencil is fine. As long as you keep drawing what you see."

She rolled her eyes. "Will do."

Then she sighed. "So, uh, do you guys need me for anything else, or are we good?"

"We're fine," I said. "I'm just going back to my apartment."

Holli gave me a dirty look. "_And_ returning to the hotel once we have our supplies."

"_Which we can do tomorrow_," I insisted.

Holli shot her daughter a pleading glance.

"He's right," Amanda said. "We can wait. I really want to know more about my brother, and where he lives."

Holli frowned at Riffraff.

"I'm kinda curious about it myself," he said.

"Me too," said Sneezer.

Extra popped out of my shirt. "Are we going to see where Master lives?"

"Apparently so," Holli groaned.

"We might be needing your services tomorrow," I told Dane. "What would be a good time?"

"Oh, anytime," she said. "I'm not working, so..._whenever._"

"Is there a best time to call you?"

"Oh, _in the afternoon_. I sleep sort of late..."

I frowned but told her all right. "I suppose I can always walk or call for a taxi."

"Don't do _that_!" she said. "Just let me know and I'll take you..._wherever_. This is the coolest thing that has ever happened to me."

She paused. "Oh. Before I forget..."

She handed me a frozen pizza. One of those deep dish pizzas with a picture of a mustache on the cardboard box. "I know it's not lasagne, but it's all we had. I would have heated it up, but I figured you guys were in a hurry, and the oven stopped working."

"Uh, thanks," I said, feeling sorry for her. I handed her a ten. "Here, uh, for gas and the pizza."

"No, no, it's okay," she said. "You guys are cool."

She took the money anyway.

"Is she supposed to do that?" Riffraff whispered to me.

"Don't worry about it. I wanted her to have it. It's not like stealing from a store."

"Oh!"

"Call you later," I said, and she hugged me.

She picked up Riffraff as well, giving him a hug and a kiss, then shook Holli's hand. "I'm sorry. I never got your name."

Holli told her, and we gave a belated round of introductions.

So. Pizza _and_ my own personal shuttle service. Maybe being animated wasn't such a horrible curse after all.

I loaded everyone in the car, cheerfully driving down that old familiar route I took to get home. My gas tank was full, so I figured it would be a straight shot, without any unwanted pit stops.

I noticed, to my annoyance, that Dane appeared to be following close behind like some kind of private investigator on a stakeout, but I could neither blame her nor condemn her for her obsession. It would, in fact, be handy if she continued to lurk nearby.

The car was quiet, my passengers' attitudes changing from that of fascinated tourists to fascinated tourists forced to sit in a bus station for five hours, sort of a deer caught in a headlights look.

I turned on NPR, listening to BBC news reports, something about how the United States should have never gotten involved in middle eastern politics. Irritated, I changed it to the rock station, which happened to be playing _Love Bites_ by Def Leppard.

I was daydreaming about real things, like trying to save my job, and my apartment, when I heard the distinctive warbling chirp of a cop car.

Glancing back, I could see I was the target, so I pulled over, rolling down the window.

Dane wisely made herself scarce, driving off into a connecting street.

"Quick!" Riffraff cried. "Floor it!"

"No," I said. "Remind me to show you a program on real police chases."

The cop got out of his car, marching up to my door.

He was your average buzz cut jarhead type. Stern, no nonsense expression. He had one of those uniforms with a CB holster on the shoulder.

As Bugs Bunny, I looked up at him (for he towered above the window) and said, "What's up, Doc?"

He suddenly had this expression like he had just smelled a fart. "License and registration please."

"I'm going to get my registration from the glove box," I said with deliberate care and slowness. You had to do this with cops or they'd pull a gun.

The man nodded, still making that disgusted grimace.

"Someone stole my license," I said as I reached over Amanda's lap, opening the glove compartment.

I said this mostly to the cop, but when I returned to my seat, I saw a dainty animated hand holding out a plastic card.

"It was in his diaper," Holli explained.

I was a little disgusted, but said thanks anyway, presenting the items to the cop.

He stared at my photograph, then at me, as a caricature of myself.

"This..._doesn't look like you_," he said, looking uncertain.

I turned real. "How about now?"

He scowled at the picture, comparing it to me.

"I...shaved," I suggested.

"Can we go on a high speed chase now?" Riffraff asked.

"No," I hissed. "That's not something I can win."

At last the cop sighed. "Your turn signal light is out. I'm going to let you go with a warning. Just..."

I was Bozo the clown now.

As he stared at me, the look on his face said he was questioning his own sanity.

It seemed this may have indeed been the case, for then he slowly backed away from the car and got in his own, driving off.

"What was that about?" Riffraff asked.

"I'm not positive, but I think he's going to seek psychological help."

"So he went crazy?" Amanda said. "How strange?"

"We don't know that for a fact," I said. "I can only assume. I mean, if I saw something like that, and I was a cop..."

"He didn't laugh maniacally and play with his lips," Riffraff said.

"Or jump up and down and scream with his head going back and forth," said Sneezer.

"There's many types of crazy," I said. "But I'm thinking he might just decide to take a little paid time off work. That's what I'd do."

Sneezer frowned. "But we will never know, will we?"

"That's right," I said. "That's absolutely right. Just like that guy that stole my mom's car five years ago. We got the car back, but the guy who stole it..._who knows_?"

"_Wow,_" Riffraff and Sneezer said in unison.

"_No resolution!_" the cat cried. "_That's so weird!_"

I pulled the car into drive, arriving, at long last, to my apartment.

I have a _studio_. It's not really a place for guests. I picked it out because it was the only one in my price range.

It was a drab yellow and rust orange two story building at the entrance of the complex, containing fourteen apartments. Mine was at the bottom.

I parked at the rock wall near the right side of that building, leading my companions around the side of the wall, because I didn't want to walk a block to the staircase. A couple little Hispanic girls with braided hair and plump faces giggled at us as we came up the walk.

The grass and greenery was a little more well tended than dad's old place, but the apartment still had its flaws. For one thing, the dirty orange main door to the building was hanging by nothing but its bottom hinge, and the interior hallway smelled like old tamales and pot.

A striped orange cat meowed at me, rubbing against my legs, but I'm allergic and didn't want to pay the pet fees, so I ignored it, clomping down a narrow carpeted staircase with something grimy and brown stuck to it.

When the cat rubbed against Amanda's leg, she of course cooed and picked it up, stroking it as she followed me downstairs.

My apartment is down the hall from the laundry room. Although that's handy, it's not as nice as you think. There are always flies that somehow find their way into my room every time I turn around. I can only guess it has something to do with the damp and the smells of soiled underwear.

"Could you please put that cat down?" I scolded Amanda as I unlocked my door.

"Why?" she said indignantly.

"I have to pay an extra fee if I have pets."

Glancing at the animals, I added, "Real pets. Morris already hangs around me every time I walk out my door. No need to encourage him."

"He's cute," Amanda said.

Rolling my eyes, I let her and everyone else in.

My place is not much to look at, but it's a little cleaner than Dane's. I have a tiny stove, a sink that barely has room for one dish pan, a refrigerator one skillet deep, and one of those window air conditioning units. My bed is your basic box spring with a cheap pine frame around it.

My only other pieces of furniture being a gaudy blue loveseat and three office chairs. My TV was the old heavy type with the tube, which I situated on top of a desk with my computer and a pile of computer parts for a second one I'd been refurbishing.

"`_Be it ever so humble_,'" Holli said disapprovingly. "`_There's no place like home.'_"

"Unlike you," I said. "I can't just paint myself a plasma TV and a recliner."

She sighed and shook her head. "Where are these supplies you mentioned?"

I opened my cabinets, showing her some pitchers, sports bottles and Tupperware containers, which I threw in some grocery bags, along with rolls of duct tape to seal the items more securely.

"Is that all you got?" Holli complained.

"It's better than nothing," I said. "Though I suppose we could either go to Wally World or my mom's house to get some more."

Immediately she dumps my trash can on the floor, making a horrible mess, which Morris, of course, loves, dragging slimy meat packages across my clean carpet.

"Wow," I groaned. "_Thanks a lot._ As if I didn't have problems with bugs at it is."

"This container is perfect," she said, clapping the lid back on.

So then I had to clean all that shit off the floor and rebag it. And of course Morris runs away when I try to take his greasy bologna package.

I put my phone on the charger, then popped the pizza in the oven (which incidentally isn't much larger than the size of the pizza) as I balanced my checkbook, trying to figure out how many months I could keep my parking spot while I played around with Cool World nonsense.

I estimated a month, unless I could milk some extra dough out of the professor's vintage currency. It seemed a trip to the pawn shop would be in order, unless I decided to park at mom's place..._which may still end with my car being towed_.

Being an adult now, I was not a direct recipient of the Deebes' fortune. He owed a lot of money, so all the profits went to mom.

I _did_, however, appear to have a free subscription to dad's comics. Although they didn't arrive weekly or monthly, I'd find new issues in my postal box at random times during the year, no payment solicited.

Amanda was looking through a box of them as I balanced the books, making that face people do when they see photographs of themselves where their eyes have been closed or they've found a pimple they thought wouldn't show up in the glossy 8X10.

Being organized as I am, I wrote a check for next month's rent, walking it to the night drop.

When I returned, I found Riffraff waving action figures of Master Splinter and a Ninja Turtle in my face. "Hey! _I know these guys!_ Where's the one of me?"

"You don't have one," I said. "If you did, I'd be sure to buy it."

"You also have a framed picture of him by the bathroom."

"So what?" I said as a rodent. "It's a cute poster."

I cleared my throat. "I mean, it's _neat_. He's kicking boards and stuff."

"You're blushing," Riffraff said.

"Am not!"

I checked the pizza, pretending like we hadn't had this conversation.

Amanda sat down on the edge of my bed (the side facing the oven) with comics bearing her likeness.

She called to her mother, who was now seated in the loveseat adjacent to the footboard, smoking a cartoon cigarette that formed vaporous elephants and hippopotami in tutus.

"I just spoke to dad a few days ago," she said. "He wants you to come over for a little Christmas get-together this year. It's not even close to the date yet, so you got plenty of time to plan..."

"Not interested," Holli said.

"C'mon. You're both my parents. You can at least have the decency to _pretend_ you're a family for the holidays."

"I don't go to Christmas parties," Holli said with an icy tone.

"It's not a party. It's a _get together_."

"Jack and I are _done_. I don't want to see him again, even if it's only for an evening."

"Is it so wrong to want to celebrate the holiday with the parents I love?"

Holli just frowned and silently puffed a dragon shaped cloud.

Noticing how Sneezer and Riffraff kept rummaging through dressers and cabinets, and generally acted like obnoxious little kids, I put in the _Muppet Party Game_ and let them play that for awhile.

Amanda found one of my books on the Hopi Indians, and was thumbing through it, but Holli looked like she were bored to tears. She puffed a smoke Godzilla, the logo for Twelve Monkeys, and, strangely, my father's face.

"What do you _do_ here?" she asked.

"Do?" I said. "I just...unwind, work on computers...I have every Quentin Tarantino film on DVD."

"Who's that?" she said.

"He's a director. He's great."

She rolled her eyes. "Sounds thrilling."

I still had ten minutes left on the pizza. My animated pets were becoming bored.

As primitive as it is, my TV actually has cable. Riffraff and Sneezer soon became glued to the set, rapidly flipping back and forth between programs: _World's Scariest Police Chases_, _Breaking Bad_, Soapnet, _Chica Vampira_ on the Latino Fox Network.

To my dismay, they also ordered something from Playboy on Demand.

I knew it was bad when it started with a slut in a kitchen and a delivery guy ringing the doorbell.

"Oh. _I didn't order any package..._"

"Change the channel or I'll unplug the TV," I ordered.

And so they changed it to _Sex Sent Me To The E.R._

_Whatever._

For awhile, there was an icy silence between Holli and her daughter, nothing passing between them but the sounds of the TV.

"You don't like the fact I work in a strip club, do you?" Amanda finally asked.

"I...I just think you could do better, that's all."

"_You're_ not that bad off..."

"That's where I disagree with you, and where I actually agree with your father. If you studied, and really applied yourself..."

"Mom. It's _Cool World_. You can't get a masters in biology or veterinary science. Remember what dad said about our scientists?"

Holli sighed. "Well maybe you should stay _here_, then."

"I _can't do that_. Dad says I have no social security number. How am I going to get a job or go to college or anything, when everything revolves around that number?"

"So you'd prefer to just work at a club, night after night, mindlessly exposing yourself to a bunch of creeps."

"It's the most secure job I can think of that pays the bills. If you're so smart, why don't _you_ become a scientist, or whatever?"

Holli had no answer for that.

As a rat, I noticed, to my dismay, that Sneezer had been, from time to time, eying me with his mouth hanging open, and little hearts popping out. He didn't get this way about my other forms, but as a female rodent...

"You're making me sexually confused," he said in between moments of drooling.

"Could you get sexually confused elsewhere?" I pointed to the TV, which was now playing something about the world's deadliest snakes. "Look! That snake is eating a mouse!"

"I don't care," he said.

I sighed. "I'm not interested. You're a little creep, and I like _girls_. Got it?"

The little hearts shattered. He looked like he was going to cry.

Well, I thought. That's just too bad. Shacking up with Sneezer would be pretty horrific.

As expected, I had to divvy up the pizza with my companions..._and Morris._

There wasn't much to go around, so I just let the others have it while I made myself a peanut butter sandwich and ate some cold hot dogs.

I really hadn't eaten since breakfast, so I had a lot.

Brushing my teeth was a surreal experience. I only knew where my molars were half the time. The other times they were titanium white and not in need of any brushing. They didn't even have a textured surface with which to grind down food.

The bedding situation was doubly awkward. I had a couple sleeping bags, but my bed would only fit two, and only if one person kind of spoons with the other.

Also, doodles don't want to sleep.

My original plan was to put Riffraff and Sneezer on sleeping bags on the floor, and let Holli use the loveseat, but Riffraff insisted on taking the bed, and, of course, Holli is Amanda's mother, so she shared the bed with him.

I tried to argue that it was my bed, but in between not wanting to get that close to Holli, and Amanda telling me to be a good sport about the bet, I gave up, just trying to sleep as comfortably as possible where I was.

Truthfully, I _was_ comfortable. I had the lights off, I had my shoes off, I was in my socks and comfortable khaki shorts...when I was real...

But then, as I was just starting to doze off, I suddenly notice a glowing hand reaching into my pocket, where my keys were.

I grabbed the glowing wrist attached to it like a pissed off viper, scowling at the indignant pink face.

"Leave my keys the hell alone!" I shouted. "The car's where I want it, and I ain't moving it! Get some damn patience!"

Groaning, I flipped the lights back on, staggered into the bathroom to change, then called Dane while I made some coffee.

"Hello?" moaned the voice on the other end.

"Sorry to wake you," I said. "It's just I'm about to lose my-"

"No, no, it's fine," she said.

I could hear the tiredness in Dane's voice. "Are you sure this is okay? I could get a taxi or walk or something. I think the exercise could do us all good."

"No, no," she said. "You're _animated_. It's like getting the direct line to Bigfoot or a UFO. You don't _plan_ something like this, and it probably will never happen again. It's fine. If E.T. wants a ride home, I'll steal a bicycle."

"All right then," I said. "I'm over at-"

"I know," she said. "I'm outside the apartment."

I swallowed. "And how long have you been there?"

"Oh? _Awhile._"

I sighed and shook my head. "Normally I'd say that was creepy, but in this case, _I really, really appreciate it_. Anything in particular I can do for you?"

"Does E.T. pay people for letting them hang out?"

"Well, no..."

"Can I have some food? _I'm starved._"


	34. Chapter 34: Sludge

"Is the cat gone?" Extra said when we loaded our stuff into the Squirrelmobile.

The bird had been hiding from that cat the whole time we stayed there, popping out every so often to look around.

...And nibble a little pizza crust.

Morris would paw at the air whenever he came out. Even when I was trying to sleep, the cat would try to grab him, so he kept tucked in my shirt, kimono, or whatever else, hiding in Hammer Space or wherever he goes when he's inside my clothing.

The cat had been nearly always underfoot from the time I entered my apartment to the time in which I'd finished unloading the Squirrelmobile's cluttered seats onto my carpet, but I managed to convince Amanda to leave it alone now, as Morris had an owner, er, _someone that fed him_ in an upstairs apartment. Judging by the `drawing' we found, Cool World was no place for non-animated cats anyway.

"Yes," I said. "It's safe to come out now."

It was a little after midnight.

I had emptied my wallet of everything except money and my driver's license, but I had brought some fairly useful tools, pencils, erasers and pens, a flashlight, a digital cameras, one of those miniature sketch pads I had from some art gallery open house, and some of dad's comics.

My phone had charged some during the pizza cooking, so I hoped it would be usable for awhile. I had already called work and left a message about being out of the country for a few months. I hoped that would be good enough to avoid a no-call-no-show termination. In a more ideal situation, I would have called during business hours and informed a live person, but this was not to be.

I glanced uncomfortably at Amanda. Despite setting out separate sleeping bags, and telling her to sleep on the other sleeping bag, she kept trying to curl up with me during that tiny amount of time I had been able to get some decent rest. And then she'd play with my feet or run her hands up my calves. One time she even tugged the bottom of my shorts. I got so mad that I slapped her in the face with a fly swatter.

She thought that was funny. I did not.

Our chauffeur was in the front seat, eating Best Choice Pop Tarts as she pulled away from the curb. I got her two packages of those, a peanut butter sandwich, and a package of rather flat and tasteless imported pastries I got for a dollar at the grocery store a couple days ago.

I frowned when thought about that pizza again. If you've ever seen a cartoon character eating, you'd know that two slices were pretty much wasted on Sneezer and Riffraff. It was like watching someone throw food into one of those trash cans with the pedal operated lids.

In between bites, Dane waved a CD case at me. "Who in their right mind listens to Mike E. Clark and Whitney Houston in the same setting?"

"Got me," I said.

Inside my shirt, I heard Extra whistling _What Is A Juggalo_.

Our driver grinned. "So we're going back to the hotel, then?"

"Unless you can find a pawn shop open this hour of night," I said.

"I think some of them are open pretty late..."

She took me to one,but it was closed, so she drove me to the hotel instead.

As we drove past the front of the building, I saw a parked car with a piece of plywood embedded in its roof, and chunks of wood lying on the sidewalk. It seemed no one had cleaned up yet.

Because of the strange cargo, we took the back entrance with the garage instead of navigating the valet area.

The guard booth was still wide open, and we had a parking tag, so we had little trouble taking the elevator back in with our odd collection of supplies.

Dane, of course, just had to follow us. Holli put her to work carrying things.

It turns out they had a camera and a tinny little microphone above the elevator buttons.

"What are you doing with that trash can and all those sacks?" a muffled voice said as the door was closing.

"We're going to get plastered," I said, holding an empty decanter up to the camera. The bottle was opaque, so a person might assume that there was something in it. "You know those parties where you pour a bunch of liquor into a big bowl?"

There was a pause.

"What's the tape for?"

"What do you think it's for?" I said, pushing the button. "I like my kinky sex."

"So do I," Amanda said.

I cringed.

"Maybe _that's_ what I'm doing wrong," Dane muttered, probably to herself.

The elevator went up.

"You...aren't that guy who knocked that big hole in the top floor wall, are you?"

With feigned surprise, I said, "_Someone knocked a hole in the wall?_"

The microphone went silent again.

And then, "I've _got_ to stop working nights."

I hurried out, wondering if the hotel had other cameras, and what kind of camera footage they already had on me.

Filling up a bunch of Gladware, Tupperware, bottles and a trash can with black glop was the easy part. Lugging full containers and a duct taped but still slopping trash can back down through scaffolding crawl spaces was something else.

One time, I actually brushed a loose wire. I probably would have been paralyzed or dead had I not turned into a flashing monkey skeleton the moment I started conducting.

And then we were standing in that dusty bedroom with a pile of bottles and containers of glop, staring at the marked up wall.

I kept fearing that Sneezer would get choked up by all the dust and blow out another wall, but Holli had a solution to this, for inside her dress she kept a little bottle containing the Nasonex bee.

She pointed to the mouse. "Pica aqui."

The bee stung Sneezer on the face, and that somehow stopped Sneezer's from sneezing.

I don't know if the real product actually does what it claims, but if you get stung by an animated bee with a Spanish accent, I guess it works really well.

"So," Holli said. "_Sneezer._ How did they get into Cool World again?"

Mr. Smiling Door was gone. There was a giant clean spot where the image had once been, dust free, like some maid had scrubbed it off...or Mr. Door had gone into another dimension.

"There used to be a door here," the mouse said with a frown.

Holli sighed. "So we can't even get into Cool World. Is that what you're saying?"

Sneezer shrugged. "Looks like it. Unless you want to try squeezing through that little Smurf window."

Dane, who had been admiring the various drawings, pointed to the image in question. "You mean this window?"

"Yeah," I said. "That's the one."

"It just looks like a drawing," she said. "Why don't you draw another door and try that?"

I chuckled. "That's why you're the artist and I'm the tax man."

I offered her a pencil.

In response, she pulled out one of those fancy green ones with no eraser they sell in art supply stores. "Thanks. I got it."

She got a little carried away. Instead of the oversimplified shape of the previous door, Dane sketched something that looked like Skeletor's bathroom door, all covered in skulls and jewels and snakes and robot parts, with a big metal ring for a handle.

Somehow she got done in about five minutes. The automatic writing thing, I supposed.

The moment my hand touched it, the door turned green and heavily shaded, making that shimmering noise things made in _He-Man_ whenever anyone walks through a magic portal.

"Oh my God!" Dane cried. "That's totally bitchin'!"

I pulled the door handle, but it didn't open.

"Where's the keyhole?" I said.

"Why do you need that?"

"The last door had a keyhole so you could unlock it."

"I thought it would be better without one, so you could pull it right open. I mean, I drew _hinges_ and everything."

I sighed. "You're the artist. What do you think I need to do?"

"I don't know. Maybe you do like _Beetlejuice_ and knock three times."

Rolling my eyes, I grabbed the ring and banged it down the prescribed number of times.

Immediately the door opened, and I was looking at _dad_.

Black hair touched with gray, large nose, big ears, long Italian face. The man looked old before he was old, like Mick Jagger.

He was standing in the upstairs hallway in some cartoon house, with a doe eyed big breasted Anime female in a tight spacesuit clinging to his arm.

"Hello?" he said as he stared through the open door.

His brow furrowed as he saw me in my normal human form.

"God," he said. "It's like I'm looking in a mirror!"


	35. Chapter 35: Family Reunion

"Dad!" I cried with surprise. "I..."

He smiled. "It's been a long time..."

I just stared at him.

The man had been absent for ninety percent of my life. I'd visit him at the jail from time to time, but, you know we weren't that close.

Riffraff and Sneezer didn't look surprised to see Dad. I guessed it had something to do with him being in Cool World for so long.

"Hi, Jack," Riffraff said.

Jack nodded. "Hey."

"Hello, dad," Amanda said.

Dad furrowed his brow, like he suspected something amiss. "Hey, sweetie."

He checked an animated watch, then squinted at her again. "I see you've been working on your control."

Holli rolled her eyes. "_You really are dense._"

No one bothered to explain anything.

"Are you going to hug him?" Amanda asked me.

This made it awkward and uncomfortable for both me and dad.

He glanced at Amanda, then did a double take.

The expression turned to shock when he saw me turn into a female vampire bat.

"Oh my God. _You didn't._"

I looked away.

He rubbed his face. "God. _Your own sister._"

"_Half _sister," Amanda corrected. "I didn't have a choice."

"You had plenty of choices!" Jack yelled. "Your mother pulled _me_ out of a prison! Why couldn't you do something like that!"

"I've _seen_ those guys," Amanda said in a low growl. "I'd rather sleep with my own brother than sleep with that scum."

Jack looked skeptical. "And you didn't look anywhere else."

Amanda waved at Dane. "I really don't think _she'd_ want me taking her boyfriend."

"I wouldn't mind that much," Dane blurted.

Amanda glared at her, then turned her anger back on dad. "I searched _all over_ Cool World for _some place, some way_ to grab a decent human man and bring him in, but someone's been closing up all the portals!"

"_Whiskers_," Jack muttered.

"Who's Whiskers?" I asked.

"No one," Dad said. "He's just the doodle that helped me save the world. Can't say I'm really surprised that he's closing off access."

He turned into a cartoon Doctor Watson. None of us, except for Dane, seemed surprised.

He and Amanda's mother stared at each other.

"Holli," Dad said, looking somewhat flustered and embarrassed.

"Jack." She breathed his name like a curse.

An awkward silence fell between the two parties.

Amanda disappeared through the door, making herself scarce, but Riffraff, Sneezer and Dane watched with rapt fascination.

Holli glanced at them in annoyance, but didn't say anything.

"So," Dad said, clapping his hands. "Who wants a drink?"

"This isn't a social visit," Holli replied coldly. "But if you wouldn't mind..."

She gestured to the containers of glop. "I need to get these home."

Back at my apartment, Holli had attempted to do some experiments with the inky stuff she'd already collected, but I'm not a scientist, and had no access to a lab. The only stuff I had remotely close to a chemistry set were some bottles of tub and tile cleaner, some measuring cups, and a broken Fisher Price microscope I had since I was a kid. She said she would have to go home to get anything accomplished.

Dad frowned, giving his rather vacuous companion a nod. "Chori..."

The strange doodle silently marched up to the collection of containers, taking a few of them through the door.

Dad grabbed the trash can, then froze as he stared at his surroundings.

"Hey!" he cried. "This is _the hotel_!"

"Yeah," I groaned. "Ironic, huh."

Dad stared at the walls. "Know anything about this?"

"_Some,_" I said. "Why?"

"Because a lot of that bullshit about Vegas Vinnie came from this place. I can't help but wonder..."

"This room was owned, rather, _occupied_ by someone named Heinreich Baubels. Manhattan Project guy, I guess. Built something called the Bubble Bomb."

Dad frowned, as if something about that sounded familiar to him.

Dane was listening with her mouth hanging open in awe.

"The guy experimented in cartoons crossing over into real life," I said. "This room is like his testing ground."

"That explains a few things," Dad muttered as he watched the cartoon cat devouring the mouse.

When Dane touched the picture, it turned back into a line drawing.

"You can look at those later," Holli said, grabbing a cluster of bottles. "We need to get this stuff into Cool World."

Jack stared at one of the containers with his hands on his hips. "Wait, wait. Holli, what is this? What are we doing with these?"

"None of your damn business," Holli snarled, shoving Gladware into Dane's hands.

"I make it my business when what you do turns everyone on earth into a cartoon."

Dane froze in mid-step, eager to hear more.

"_I'm not doing that this time_," Holli sighed, casually shoving the girl towards the portal. "All I did was drain a little liquid from under the spike, so we can find a cure for being part animated."

Dad shook his head, then hefted the trash can through the door. Dane followed him.

The hallway beyond the door looked like an architect's concept design for a tropical resort. Lots of wood paneling, lush plants springing up all over, exotic looking sculptures, fancy framework around the doors and windows. There was also an immense aquarium, with some fairly realistic looking fish inside.

Once inside, Dane froze again, staring at her surroundings with joyous wonderment. She practically dropped the containers of goop as she gawked at everything.

I doubted she would ever come back out again.

Extra popped out of my shirt for a moment, looking around. "Mast-"

He clamped his beak shut abruptly, whistling the theme to _The Scarecrow and Mrs. King_.

"Extra," I said. "It's okay. If someone tries to-"

The bird covered my mouth. "Master must never mention what we discussed," he hissed in my ear. "Not here. Not anywhere near Cool World. You will get me in trouble!"

I gave him a slight nod, so as to pretend he hadn't spoken.

He dove back into my shirt.

I watched Holli and the others taking the last of the containers into the house.

Honestly, I wanted to just shove her and everyone else through the door and slam it shut, leaving them there while I tried to piece together my life.

The problem was, I was stuck in a half animated form, so I desperately needed that cure.

"How's your mother been?" Dad asked me.

"Oh?" I said. "She's fine. Bitchy as usual. Still married. Still not happy about my lame job. I think she wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer or something."

He laughed and shook his head. "Sometimes I think she's the only reason why I came to Cool World. To get away from her."

"I don't think you have to worry about _that _anymore," I said. "She pretty well doesn't think you exist."

"That may be true," he said. "But she's still taking a bite out of me financially, isn't she?"

"Pretty much. I think you willed her everything you own."

"That's bullshit," he said.

I shrugged. "Most lawsuits are, but what can you do? It's not like you were there to contest it."

"What about you?" he asked. "What did _you_ do about it?"

"Me?" I said. "I'm lucky I can even afford rent."

"You work at H and R Block. I had to pay those guys almost two hundred dollars to file my paperwork, and you're saying you can't afford rent?"

I rolled my eyes. "I've had this conversation with mom. Just because you pay them two hundred dollars doesn't mean _I_ get two hundred dollars. I work in a call center. It's different. Plus I have a bunch of other bills. The point is, I can't afford a lawyer, and you've been absent most my life, so I really don't care enough to get one."

He frowned at me, but didn't seem that irked, probably because he was used to living in Cool World, where he could draw his own money, or anything else he wanted.

He gestured to the door. "Why don't you come in and make yourself comfortable? I've got some fairly good drinks, or snacks if you want them."

Dane closed a cartoon closet door she'd been peering in. "What kind of snacks?" she called.

I looked at her like she was crazy. "Wasn't all that food I got you enough?"

"Well," she said. "I mostly nibbled. And I get sick if I try eating more than two Pop Tarts at a time."

Jack waved us all in. "Let's talk in the living room."

I really had no choice. I could either work the phones as Popeye the Sailor or take another trip into Looney Land.

Plus, whenever I turned into Rat Lady, Riffraff kept yanking my tail, dragging me to the door.

Dad's house looked like one of those jungle palaces you wander through in all of those _Myst_ video games, an ostentatious display of wealth and sophistication, full of obscure pieces of sculpture and confusing bits of machinery that seemed to serve no apparent purpose.

I supposed if Dad wanted to assemble compound molecule chains every time he wanted to make coffee or flush the toilet, that was his business.

I stared at the Chinese fishes flitting back and forth in the aquarium, the scavenger shrimp cleaning out the mouth of a clownfish that, thankfully, wasn't Nemo.

"I originally planned to do the old fashioned house with the picket fence," Dad said. "But Holli _apparently wasn't ready to settle down_, so I just said `screw it' and made what I wanted."

"Interesting," was the only thing I could think to say in reply.

I heard the shatter of glass, then a red and white bird with a baseball for a body flapped into the hallway. Its beak chirped as it wiggled its tail feathers and flapped its wings.

Although not positive, I could almost swear that I saw it, or a bird like it, when playing baseball against Riffraff. In fact, I was certain I'd seen a few of those while playing center in little league..._when I was trying to catch the real ball_.

Looking irritated, Dad picked the bird up, hurling it out the broken window. "Damn pop flies," he muttered.

We descended a wide ornately wrought spiral staircase, entering a living room in the style of Frank Lloyd Wright. Elegant fireplace, nature paintings, a fountain, and a forest outside the window, some kind of indoor garden at the opposite end.

Dad gestured at the room. "I made this whole building from scratch," he said proudly. "I designed every room, from the blueprints to the decoration."

"You're definitely talented," I said.

"Sometimes I think that's his only virtue," Holli muttered.

Chori blinked, as if trying to decide if she agreed with that assessment.

I marched further in.

Off to one side, I could see a hallway lined with Japanese paper screens instead of sturdy walls.

They had several bookshelves. Amanda sat at a little desk in the corner, reading _A Clockwork Orange_. Okay, you don't actually read that book as much as look up words in the back and try to decipher all the sentences, but that's what she was doing.

Holli had already loaded all the containers of glop into a cart, and was wheeling it down the hallway when I came down.

Dad led me to a pair of facing rectangular sofas, gesturing for me to sit.

He glanced at his new animated girlfriend. "Chori, could you get us some drinks, please?"

The Asian nodded. So far, she had not uttered a single word.

I supposed it figured, as mother always tended to be a motormouth.

Dane sketched a skull on the circular coffee table, and it came to life, floating in the air above the sofa. "This is _awesome_!"

Jack took out an eraser and erased it. "I know you're excited, but could you please refrain? I don't want to live in a haunted house."

Dane blushed. "Sorry."

Riffraff and Sneezer didn't speak, probably because they were familiar with the family's relational difficulties and didn't want to get caught up in it. Instead they only watched us, wide eyed, and listening attentively.

"So," Dad said. "Son..."

This was awkward because I had just turned female, Sneezer of course staring at me with little hearts popping out.

Dad didn't skip a beat. "Tell me. How did you manage to wind up in Cool World?"

And so I told him the story.

"And you think Holli will actually find the cure." He sounded skeptical.

"I don't know," I said, turning into that fat kid from Disney's _Up_. "But I don't want to stay like this."

Dad turned into a cartoon clown. "I didn't either, but if there was really a cure, we would have found it by now. You do realize that stuff is basically ink, right?"

I turned into The Brave Little Toaster. "I'm really hoping there's more _basically_ in there than ink. I can't live like this."

Dad changed into an animated version of himself. "Me, I _have_ learned to live with it."

Chori came back from another room with a tray full of drinks, and sushi, setting them on the coffee table.

Dane immediately shoved two sushi rolls into her mouth, then frowned when she noticed the general flavorlessness.

I picked up a...I don't know, _something_, in a champagne glass. "It's easy for you," I said. "You can just draw yourself an imaginary girlfriend, and food, and a house. I can't draw anything. I can only do _holes_ and hearts and stick figures. I don't belong here."

Dad sipped his drink. "This place really isn't so bad, once you get used to it."

"_I'd say_," Dane muttered in awe. She sipped from a wine glass, then grimaced.

I took a drink of mine and set it down. "Everything here tastes like tea."

"Mine tastes kind of like water," Dane said.

Riffraff shook his head. "_Humans._"

Dad looked disappointed in me. "You've inherited your imagination from your mother."

He pointed at his glass. "This is an exceptional French Bordeaux. Remember that scene from _Peter Pan_ when they're eating off of empty plates and dishes?"

"No," I said.

He sighed. "Robin Williams pretends they're full of food, _and they are_. In Cool World, that's not pretend, that's _survival_."

"If that works so well, why haven't you figured out a way to make yourself completely human?"

He looked pained. "Believe me. I've tried. Just because a little kid can squish a bunch of lemons and make lemonade doesn't mean they can figure out the formula for Coke."

"I'm taking the Mach 5, Holli called from the hallway entrance.

"That's a racecar," Dad said. "There isn't room for storage or passengers. Take the Owlmobile. It's got plenty of room."

"It's a glorified minivan."

"Your point being? It's got cargo room and seats for passengers."

"I need something with a little more speed."

"You can't take Kitt."

"I can do what I want," Holli said, marching down the hallway.

Amanda got up, gesturing for me to follow her. "C'mon, Drew."

I shrugged and did so, marching down the corridor of paper screens.

Things got strange as we walked down that path, but I guess that was to be expected.

Through one open sliding door I could see a dojo, in which a ninja rabbit practiced stunts like they did in that Kung Fu sequence in the first _Matrix_ film, running up the walls, defying gravity, that sort of thing.

Another open screen led to a female rabbit with a little tea set. The creature was big breasted and had on one of those baggy kimono things that revealed more than it concealed, and basically fell off when you untied the string, like a Chinese bathrobe. I kept walking.

A garage stood at the end of this hallway, containing a row of fine cars. A corvette, a shiny yellow Jeep, an Aston Martin. The room had been designed to look like a garage from the 1950's, complete with antique beverage signs, one of those vending machines that dispensed sodas in glass bottles, and an old style Mobilgas fuel pump.

The garage door was open, beyond which I could see a desert. It seemed the jungle was only on the opposite side.

...Unless it was one of those Looney Tunes things where it's a painting and you can drive through it.

In the back of this place, I saw a Chevy Lumina minivan, covered in gray feathers, with a sort of owl-like `mask' covering the front end. The Owlmobile, no doubt.

The _Knight Rider_ car had been parked between the _Speed Racer_ car and the Barracuda from _Phantasm, _making that weird whooshing sound as lights swept back and forth on its hood display.

As I looked around, taking in my surroundings, and wondering if Phantasm had ever been a cartoon, I heard the black Trans Am revving its engine.

A second later, it was off in the desert, leaving us in a cloud of cartoon dust.

"Hey!" I cried. "What the hell?"

"_I know_," Dad said with a smirk. "_Shocking_, isn't it?"

He jangled a set of keys. "Where to?"


	36. Chapter 36: Owlmobile

As we approached the Owlmobile, I glanced at Dane with a frown. "I was hoping you could, you know, _go back to the car_, and _make sure it doesn't get towed..._"

"I can do that later," she said.

I shook my head. "I'm not sure you can. The last time I came here, the door disappeared. I wasn't sure I'd ever get out."

She shrugged indifferently. "So? I like it here."

"But you're pregnant," I said.

"Can you think of a cooler place to raise a baby?"

"What about the car?" I said.

"It's not mine. Plus it's a _hotel_. You have to be there a _long time_ for them to tow you out of there!"

"They _do_ look at your validation, though," I urged.

"It's _your ex girlfriend's car_. Who cares?"

I hated to say it, but she had a point. _Plus_, it was her car that had been parked there originally. Even if it did get towed, I left her with a cleaner car, and a full tank of gas. She should thank me.

"Fine," I sighed. "Don't wander off."

Our ride was hideous. A pink minivan, covered in feathers, inside and out, including the seats. It was like the world's largest feather duster. We had to sting Sneezer with the Nasonex bee to keep him from blowing off the sliding doors.

Technically, it wasn't an allergy, but a response to a feather tickling his nose. Still, it worked.

The vehicle had a few items of radar and surveillance equipment, an empty tool rack, and, bizarrely, a computerized library catalog, and a pair of loaded bookshelves.

"On a hunt for overdue books?" I asked dad.

He laughed. "Don't ask me. The library was doing a fundraiser." He shrugged. "Amanda kind of twisted my arm."

I chuckled.

Dane naturally sat next to Riffraff, just like she did in the house.

I tried to sit in a passenger seat behind the driver, but Dad asked me to sit up front.

Dad's new girlfriend sat before a console in the back, watching a radar and cameras as we pulled out of the garage, pushing buttons to retrieve data.

As I watched her work, I saw her flickering into a real Japanese woman. It answered a question I really didn't want to ask out loud.

I glanced at Dad in the driver's seat and found him changing the opposite way, becoming a large cartoon Ewok.

The pedals shifted to meet his stubby feet, the chair and steering wheel shifting to fit his body. He stayed like this for some time.

He leaned over the chair, talking to his daughter. "I'm guessing she said no about the party."

Amanda nodded. "Sorry."

The view out the front window was an unchanging desert landscape, not unlike the one I'd crossed to find The Land of the Lost Stuff.

Dane examined the inside of the sliding door next to her, which appeared to have been a weapons rack at some point, empty holsters, sockets for something cylindrical, possibly bombs or cartridges.

She turned around, smirking at the cat as she gestured at Sneezer. "Any particular reason why you never try to eat that mouse?"

"I don't _do_ mice," he said. "That's just not my bag."

Dane chuckled, probably due to her imagining him doing a mouse. "Where's Odie?"

"I don't know no Odie," Riffraff said.

"But you're Garfield! You've _gotta_ know Odie!"

"Babe," he said. "I like you, but you're confusing me with another cat!"

"Going back to Holli's place?" Dad asked.

"Looks like it," I said. "I don't imagine there's a hotel."

"You can always stay with me," Dad said.

I shuddered at the thought of spending the night in the same house where my dad could be screwing his animated girlfriend. "That's...okay. I'll figure something out on my own."

"Suit yourself."

Amanda leaned over my seat. "You can stay with me. We'll be close to mom's place. We can check her progress."

I nodded, hoping her offer wasn't another ploy to get in my pants. My companions, however, were probably hoping that it was. "Uh...fine."

I frowned at Dane. "What about you? I don't think there's room for you in my sister's apartment."

"Maybe I could draw a bed or something."

"I have some workout mats and a little couch," Amanda suggested.

"That's cool."

"Who's Margaret Shusher?" Sneezer said suddenly.

"I think she owned this car," Dad said. "Why?"

A minivan is not a car, per se, but that's how Dad always talked.

The mouse held up a plastic badge. "I found this in a seat."

Dad reached back and grabbed the object, staring at it with mild interest. "Huh." He handed it back.

Dad pushed a button on the dashboard stereo, and the faux classical music was replaced by...nothing. He pointed at the digital readout. "Apparently this is the soundtrack to _The Librarian._"

Dad pushed a button, and a set of airplane controls popped out around the dash. "Fasten your seatbelts, and make sure your tray tables are folded in the upright position," he muttered.

And then he pulled back on the steering wheel, taking us up in the air.

"That's kind of cool," Dane said.

"Cooler than some of this other junk," I agreed.

Dad pushed a lever all the way forward, and the super minivan somehow went into warp speed. A second later, we were flying over a familiar looking stretch of buildings, touching down in front of Holli and Amanda's apartment, behind the black Trans Am.

"You know," Dad said, gesturing to the entrance. "I think I saw some vacancies listed in the paper. Maybe you could ask the building manager."

I frowned. It _would_ make things less awkward. But then again, I didn't anticipate a permanent stay. "I suppose I _could_."

We got out, and Dane again froze in one spot, gawking at her surroundings.

When I glanced back at our vehicle, I noticed a pair of jet engines and small airplane wings retracting into the vehicle's body. A feathery vertical stabilizer was also trying to retract, but didn't quite go back in. It just clanked noisily, popping back out of the roof.

Amanda smiled at me. "I've got to get a key made for you. I'd hate to see you getting locked out and sleeping in an alley."

I figured I could just draw a key, but I thanked her anyway.

She knocked on the flat knocker, and the mutant skull came to life.

"Wow," it laughed. "Looks like a party!"

The skull twisted its neck as it stared at my dad. "So. You finally came crawling back." It laughed at him.

"N-no," Dad said, raising his hands defensively. "I'm just dropping off my daughter. Holli and I are _done_."

The skull chuckled. "_Sure you are. _Sure..."

It turned its attention to Dane. "Who's the new noid?"

"Hi," Dane said with a grin, waving at it. "I'm Dane."

She reached up and touched the creature, chuckling when she noticed it uttering a low purring sound.

Mutant skull chuckled. "Nice kid."

It turned two dimensional, sliding open.

Dad stared through the doorway. "This is new. I thought there was a double staircase and stuff."

"They just remodeled," Amanda said. "It was a mess the first couple weeks. We had flying superheroes taking us to our apartments."

"Anyone I recognize?" Dane asked.

She shrugged. "Kultoog Ha, Sargeant Stretchpants, Wonderbread, Child Prodigy?"

"In other words," I said. "No."

I and the others marched into the lobby, but Dad stayed out on the steps.

"I'd better not," he said with a sheepish smile. "Anyways, I've got to get Kit back to the garage."

"Kit has an autopilot," Amanda said.

Dad chuckled and shook his head. "I'm sorry. I just don't think I should go up there." He looked me in the eyes. "Come visit me at my place, anytime. My door is always open."

He gave me a smirk. "I'll see you around."

I offered my hand to shake, but he said, "Oh c'mon. You can hug your old man."

And I did so. Awkwardly.

He sighed, waved goodbye, and got in the Trans Am.

We took the elevator upstairs, marching over to Holli's place.

The door was locked, or rather, _a drawing_, but Amanda let us in.

We didn't find anyone there. The woman wasn't in the main room or her bedroom.

"Where do you think she went?" I asked as I watched Dane poking a mouse in a martini glass.

Amanda frowned at a metal door on one side of the room, peering through a window on its top portion.

A statue of a discus player stood on a pedestal to one side of the door. She twisted its throwing arm in a circle, and the metal door slid open, revealing a laboratory full of bubbling beakers and test tubes, the usual stuff they use in cartoons about mad scientists and Frankenstein.

Dane tried to grab a pair of test tubes and mix them, but I told her no. It would more than likely blow up everything in the lab (including my cure) in addition to making her into a Frankenstein Tweety bird.

"But that would be cool!" she said. "I mean, being Frankentweety."

"Tell you what," I answered. "If I can regain my humanity, I'll find you a chemistry set just like this, and you can blow yourself up to your heart's content."

"Right on!" she said with a grin.

Holli now had the black stuff sitting in one large vat, the original containers tossed haphazardly all over the floor. I guess the only thing that really bothered me was the stolen thermos. The other stuff could be replaced.

The woman had on a lab coat and a pair of wielding goggles, and she was reading what appeared to be a cookbook as the big man-gorilla thing from the lobby (now also clad in a lab coat) mixed chemicals into a flask.

"How's it coming?" I asked.

"Lousy," came the bitter reply. "Of course, the only breakthroughs I can expect in twenty four hours are mutant superpowers. Unraveling the secrets of the universe take time, say a week to one month."

"Wow," I joked. "The future looks pretty bleak!"

"Actually," Sneezer said in a serious tone. "Your odds sound really good."

"I know," I said. "That was called _sarcasm_."

I smiled at Amanda's mother. "That's really great, Holli. Please let me know when you find the cure, okay?"

She nodded, but I wondered if she really would let me know without pressing her about it. If she wanted it all for herself, for example...

"All right," I groaned, looking at Amanda. "I'm dog tired. Let's go back to your place."

Ironically, I said this while taking on the form of Scruff McGruff. Dane laughed.

I had the choice of three beds. I could try out the slot machine bed, and drop down into a pit, I could share a bed with Amanda, and take my chances, or I could sleep either on the padded floor in front of the bookcase, or on the padded bench.

Riffraff, seeing the sleeping options available to him, went home to see Cleo. Dane asked to go with him, but he said no. I think he was just annoyed at her calling him Garfield all the time.

Sneezer again took the slot machine bed, disappearing with a scream when he got a bar and two cherries.

When Dane saw what happened, she preferred to recline on the bench.

I tried to curl up beneath her on the padded floor mats, but it didn't work. Joining Dane on the bench _did_ cross my mind, but it didn't look like there was enough room.

And so I opted for sleeping on the bed with Amanda, with my back to her.

That worked for awhile, but after an hour or so, she was wrapping her arms and legs around me, rubbing her crotch against my leg.

Eventually, after about ten minutes of me complaining about a headache and generally being unresponsive, she gave up and let me sleep.

I had only slept for maybe four hours or so before I felt a hand caressing my rear end.

"Amanda," I groaned with my eyes shut. "_Don't do that._ You're my sister."

The hand stopped, and it was like someone was driving knives into my butt.

I let out an agonized scream...and actually did that thing cartoons do when they sit on a cactus.

In my animated Scouter Drew form, my body somehow launched itself upwards, smashing a me shaped hole in the ceiling, causing a female cow in bloomers in the upstairs apartment to scream in fright and hit me with a purse as I fell back down.

I turned human halfway down, landing painfully on the bed.

And there was Riffraff, with his claws bared. "Good morning, slave," he said as he retracted them. "Ready for your first fun filled day?"


	37. Chapter 37: Down in the Dumps

I looked around and didn't see Amanda anywhere. Dane was also strangely missing. I guessed they went out shopping together or something.

I frowned at the cat in disgust. "You put your hand on my butt."

"Only because it was funny."

"You're _funny_, all right. But it's a _different kind of funny._"

Riffraff narrowed his eyes. "I'm not sure I like what you're implying."

"_And I'm_ not sure I like you touching my butt!"

"You want me to add an additional year?" he threatened.

"No," I said. "I think you'd enjoy it a little too much."

"You were female when you were sleeping."

I blushed, realizing he was probably right. "_Sure I was._"

Riffraff glared at me. "All right, wise guy. For that, I'm going to think up some especially difficult tasks for you to do. Come with me. You've got a busy day ahead of you."

"Wait," I said. "What about breakfast? Or a shower?"

He shook his head. "You should have thought about that before you started questioning my sexuality."

I followed him out the door, all the while searching the empty apartment, wondering where Amanda and Dane had gone off to.

We bumped into Sneezer as he was coming out of an elevator...dressed in a silver suit.

"You fell down the bottomless pit again. How did you get out this time?"

"Actually, I fell into the _Buck Rogers_ opening sequence."

I rolled my eyes as Twinkie the robot popped out of the elevator, going, "Bleebideebideep."

The Cat-Illac was parked in front of the building, with Hector and Cleo occupying the seats. I supposed the others were sleeping or something.

Riff led me to the driver's side door, gesturing for me to get in. "You are now our official chauffeur."

I shrugged indifferently. "Nothing new there. " And it wasn't. Only the vehicle had changed. Thanks to our little tour through Las Vegas, I even had a driver's license in my pocket, in the unlikely event that I actually needed it in Toon Town.

Riffraff waved Hector out of the driver's seat, and I took his place, grinning as I stared at the controls.

Classic Cadillac setup, well, except for the seat ejection button, the submersible and boat modes, and other strange features.

"I've always wanted to drive this thing," I said, rubbing my hands. "Are you insured for this, or do you need to revise your plan?"

Riffraff reddened. "I...um, er...that is..."

And then I hear someone knocking on the car door.

Looking down, I see a green gecko with a suitcase. "May I be of some assistance?"

I rolled my eyes.

"We don't actually own this vehicle," Riffraff said.

"Oh," the creature sighed in disappointment. "Well, once you do own a _car, truck, van or SUV_, let me know, and I'll insure it." Then he offered me a card.

It was just the 1-800 number and the web address.

Before I could pocket the card, Riffraff jumped out and grabbed the gecko, shoving him into the glove compartment. "Problem solved."

I started up the engine and pulled the shifter into drive.

The streets of Cool World were convoluted and confusing. In fact, Convoluted Street turned into Confusing at the corner of Crazy and Ridiculous. I needed Riffraff's directions to figure out where I was going.

We rolled up in front of a grocery store called Dinosaucer's Market, which was just a regular grocery store manned by alien dinosaurs.

Outside the sliding glass door, Riffraff whispered to me about shoplifting from the place, but I told him about Sneezer's stash of Daffy Ducks, and he changed his mind, telling me to go grab a cart.

You very rarely see grocery stores in cartoon shows. The most notable ones were on _Heathcliff_, _South Park_ and _Dinosaucers_. They might have had one on _King of the Hill_, but I never watched more than a couple episodes, so I don't know.

For this reason, the place was rather dry and uninteresting, not that I complained.

I pushed the buggy around as Riffraff piled it full of items, milk, fish and meat, most prominently.

The feminine products aisle was rather small, consisting only of nail care and makeup items. Judging by last night's `auditor', I supposed that doodles didn't menstruate, or douche, or require anything else that you'd find in a feminine products aisle..._or_ an adult incontinence aisle.

When we got to the counter, Riffraff didn't ask Sneezer for the dough. He just reached into his silver suit and grabbed it.

The armored brontosaurus behind the counter accepted the payment, using an alien ray gun to pack all our items into a small box that shouldn't have fit all those items without exploding. I suppose, because of the device, it made more sense than most other things in that place.

We put the box in the trunk, and I was directed to drive back to the junkyard, which is apparently located between spooky Elm Street and Sinister Street (which, I was told, extended forever, just block upon block of identical looking buildings, defying all laws of geography and logistics).

When I passed through the main gate, Leroy gave me a low growl and said, "Did you get that loan taken care of?"

"Almost," I lied. "But the guy was a _shark_. I promise I'll pay for it when I find a place that's legit."

Sadly, I came to the realization that I probably _would_ have to find such a place.

He glared at me in annoyance, then said, "While you're doing that, you should also find another home for those vermin you're driving around. This isn't a campground."

I figured he'd change his mind for the right amount of money, but I didn't want to offer something I didn't have. "Okay. I'll keep my eyes peeled."

The dog stared at me for a moment, then burst out laughing.

"What," I said.

"Nothing," he chuckled. "It's just, that's the first time I've heard someone saying that without literally peeling their eyes." He laughed some more, slapping his knee. "Hilarious!"

Instead of peeling my eyes, I rolled them, steering the car back into the junkyard.

The cats lived in a tall mountain of junk topped with an airplane fuselage. Our parking spot was strategically located downhill from a bunch of interconnected air conditioner ducts, i.e. the bathtub luge they show on the beginning of every episode of _Heathcliff_.

The interior I can sum up on one word: _Ghetto_. Or maybe _Sanford and Sons_. The floors looked all cobbled together, the door and window frames lopsided, the couch was _curbateur_, some discard from the dump, I suppose, with a spring sticking out of it. There was the bathtub toboggan with an ugly curtain around it, and a beat up mattress with a crooked bed frame.

It seemed I was in a studio apartment of sorts. Off to one side, I could see a short hallway leading to a sketchy looking staircase that probably would collapse the moment I stepped on it. I glimpsed another room below.

You would have thought that Sneezer would be in danger as a mouse among cats, but nobody bothered him. He just relaxed on the couch like he lived there.

Despite its small size, the box weighed a ton. I lugged it up into the airplane, to a small refrigerator in the corner of the place, wondering where they got the electricity from when I found the interior of the appliance chilled and lit up.

Deciding it didn't matter, I opened the box from Dinosaucers, which exploded like that can of snakes people get from novelty gag shops.

It was clear that the volume of the box exceeded the capacity of the fridge and the box, which confused me when I tried to fill it. When I gently set the milk, meat and eggs in the shelves, I only got a quarter of the groceries in.

"No no no," Riffraff said. "You're doing it all wrong."

And then he starts shoving and squishing everything in, stretching the sides of the fridge like a rubber band, then grabbing the door and stomping it in with his feet, squeeezing the door shut on the whole mess.

"That's great," I said. "But you've just done the suitcase gag. You'll have food flying all over."

That's when he pulls the door handle down like a lever.

When he opened the door again, it's like a picture perfect well stocked refrigerator.

"So...there's a hidden freezer beneath the freezer?"

"Hammer Space," he said.

It wasn't funny to me or anything. It was just how it was, so I only said, "Gotcha."

And then, "Do you have to pay a _fee_ to own a piece of Hammer Space?"

He gave me a suspicious look. "Why. Are you a bill collector?"

I smirked. "I think you answered my question."

Riff shrugged. "I may or may not be behind a month."

"Oh!" I heard Cleo saying from a doorway. "Our slave is here! Wonderful!"

"Yes, baby," Riffraff said. "He's been a chauffeur and our grocery boy. He even paid for the groceries. Any requests before I really torture him?"

"I can think of a few," she said with a mischievous grin. "First of all, he needs to _dress_ like a slave."

"Roman, Egyptian or French maid?"

She paused and rubbed her chin. "French maid."

I groaned. "Seriously?"

So far, the abuse had been rather mild. The groceries and stocking the fridge was a little annoying, but not quite. But _this_...this was unreasonable.

I really considered blowing the whole thing off. I mean, no one said I _had_ to submit to this...

But I kind of wanted to. At least a little. I sort of still liked Riffraff, and wanted to get on his good side. I don't know why, but I did.

Plus I was kind of stuck in Cool World now, so there were certain things I had to learn to put up with.

"Seriously," he said. "Go see Leroy. Ask him to show you the slave shop."

"Why am I asking _him_?" I asked in alarm.

"He's been our slave before. He'll show you where to go."

I frowned. "Oh..._kay._"

I glanced at Sneezer. "You'd better come along. Leroy's been pestering me about the car. They might want a down payment or something."

The mouse gave me a knowing smile.

I swallowed hard. "Oh no. You _got_ your show already. That's technically my money."

"You only found it. It's not _yours._"

I put my hands on my hips, scowling at him. As I did this, I suddenly became the rat in the kimono.

Sneezer's mouth dropped open, and hearts popped out of his body. "I'll do _anything for you!_"

"_Right_," I groaned. "Whatever. Let's go."

Grinning, the mouse followed me out the crudely constructed door.

And so I marched down the mound of junk, noting, with some annoyance, that I had suddenly become Scouter Drew again.

At least, I told myself, it's better than that fatass from Pixar's _Up_.

Nervously, I marched down through the piles of discarded trash, furniture and car parts until I found Leroy seated at a little table, chewing on a rubber steak in a dog dish.

I waved to him.

The dog bit off a chunk of steak and stared at me. "Did you get lost, little boy?"

"Uh, no," I said. "Riffraff made me his slave, and I'm looking for the, um, _slave shop._ You know anything about that?"

He scowled. "I might."

My animated form flickered, and I was myself again.

"Waaait!" he growled. "You're that Deebes kid, aren't you? I knew I recognized that voice!"

"Uh..._you got me_."

"If there's one thing I hate more than anything else, it's liars. Be honest with me. Deebes, did you really intend to buy that Cadillac, or were you just making up a story to get past me?"

I swallowed. "Actually, I've always liked that car. Probably more than the cats that live in it."

"That's what I wanted to hear!"

I gave him a nod. "That's right. "

He crossed his arms. "I still want to see that loan paperwork."

I sighed. "Fine. I've been meaning to get that done anyway. Do you know where I can find someone who can offer me a loan without giving me a shifty deal?"

Leroy scratched his head. "No. I'm just a dog."

But then he paused, pulling out a silver bullet. "Wait. I completely forgot about this. A _masked man_ came by here a few weeks ago. I think he said his name was the Loan Arranger. Maybe you can try giving him a call."

And he handed me the bullet.

"Ohhkay, as crazy as that sounds, I'm guessing it's legit. How do I use this...bullet?"

Leroy shrugged. "I don't know. Shoot it?"

He pulled out a gun. "Here. Use this."

He handed me a cartoon weapon that probably wouldn't hurt him if I shot him with it.

Before I could fire the bullet in the air or anything, he said, "Wait. Better check with the boss for an estimate first."

I smiled. "That's a good idea. I don't know what I was thinking."

The dog led me up to a square little concrete building that said Office on it. Its windows only showed diagonal bands of blue and white, so I couldn't see inside until Leroy was pushing the door open and leading me in.

It was like going upstairs in a sitcom. Nobody showed the junkyard office on the cartoon, so I had no idea what to expect.

Like other cartoon buildings, it was bigger on the inside than out, like a warehouse, and the only thing that it seemed to contain was a pair of offices and an immense desk, the latter occupied by an even more immense stupid looking purple pig demon with horns and glowing eyes.

"Uh, hello?" I said.

"Who are you?" the creature replied, his voice, of course, a demonic rumbly bass.

"I'm Drew Deebes. I'm interested in buying the Cat-Illac."

"_Are you_," he said with skepticism.

"Definitely, sir. How much do you want for it?"

"Ten grand," he replied. "Be aware that by purchasing said item, you risk destabilizing the integrity of this entire reality, and possibly wipe several characters out of existence."

"I've just had sex with a doodle," I said. "How bad can it be?"

"There is more than one way to destroy Cool World."

"Why will it destroy Cool World?" I said. "I mean, if anything, expanding the universe of a particular cartoon would _strengthen_ it, not weaken it."

"You'll destroy canon on a discontinued series."

"So? " I said. "It just needs to be rebuilt."

"It's not as simple as you think. There are established character-antagonist relationships, dramatic tension, not to mention copyright laws to negotiate."

"I still don't see a problem," I said. "All those things can be expanded, except maybe the copyrights. It gives depth. Shows character development. This place is already full of dramatic conflict. The cats will still be interesting, even if they decide to move on."

The creature only laughed, handing me some paperwork and a pen with ink the color of blood.

"What's this?" I said.

"A contractual agreement stating that, upon failing to pay the ten thousand dollars within a year, you are obligated to serve me for two."

I frowned. "It almost sounds like you know about the agreement I had with Riffraff."

He laughed. "I know _everything_ that happens in this junkyard."

As I signed each line, I heard thunder, and an unseen choir sang an ominous piece like they did in the scary parts of _Indiana Jones_ movies.

Clouds of red-purple animated smoke surrounded me, the kind that came out of the evil genie bottle on Disney's _Aladdin_.

When I finished signing, the demon did the traditional villain laugh, an unnatural progression from chortles to mad barking guffaws.

I just stared at him, not quite as impressed as I supposed I should be.

In fact, I was thinking about how James Bond villains always laugh exactly three times like this, which led me to thinking about _Austin Powers_ and that Bond parody song by Mister Blotto.

After an awkward moment, the demon growled, "Get out of here. You ruined it."


	38. Chapter 38: The Committee

"So what did he say?" Leroy asked me when I came out of the office.

I shrugged. "Ten grand. It's actually ten cheaper than what I paid for my car." I paused, frowning at the mouse. "Speaking of which, we need to make use of existing capital."

"A down payment?" Leroy guessed.

"Funny, I said. "The guy didn't even ask me for one."

I looked the mouse in his beady eyes. "How much money you got in that silver suit?"

"It's not ten grand," he said.

I held out my hand. "Money, please."

"It's just a stupid car. What's in it for me?"

I scowled at him. "How about joint ownership of that so-called `stupid car'?"

Sneezer rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "What else?"

"What do you mean, _what else_?" I wanted to slap that white blob of paint that he called a face, or maybe just reach into his outfit and grab the money myself, but neither one would achieve the desired result. Also, the thought of reaching into his spacesuit and finding his privates made me shudder.

"What do you want? Another free show?"

"Getting warmer!" he said.

I grimaced in disgust. I knew what he wanted, I just didn't want to say it out loud, for fear of giving him ideas. "I'm not sure I understand."

"_I think you do_," Sneezer grinned.

"I really, really don't think so."

"You mean, _you won't_, or you really don't think you understand?"

"Let's go with the second one and see what I think about the first. What exactly are you implying?"

"_You know_," he said mischievously.

"No," I said. "I really don't."

"I _know_ you do, or else you would have already gone out and said it."

"I always hesitate before agreeing to things I don't understand. That's how I avoid pyramid schemes and door to door knife selling gigs."

"_You don't want to say it._"

I narrowed my eyes. "I don't want to say it because you'll just get an idea that I never wanted you to have."

"It seems like _you do_ know what he's talking about," Leroy said.

"You stay out of it!" I snapped.

The dog raised his paws defensively.

"See?" Sneezer said. "Even _he_ agrees with me. You just don't want to say it out loud."

"All right, all right," I bluffed. "But me and Pippi Longstocking..._what will the children look like_?"

The mouse chuckled. "_I knew you knew._"

I sighed nervously. "Fine. Find me Pippi Longstocking, and we'll talk."

Sneezer smiled in a way that nauseated me. "_I wasn't talking about Pippi Longstocking_."

"I...don't follow you," I said.

"Yes you do."

The conversation devolved into that childish game where the two parties alternate between saying, "You do" and "I don't", for nearly an entire minute.

At last I yelled, "I'm not having sex with you!"

"What about when you're a rat in a kimono?"

"Still no," I said. "I don't sleep with anyone that wears a diaper!"

"I'm not wearing any now," he said, pointing to his silver suit.

"Still no," I said. "That's like kiddie porn. I don't do that."

"How about a date?"

"Seriously?" I said, turning into Kimono Rat. "You hang around me all the time already! I shudder to think about what you consider romantic!"

"You're not convincing me to give you the money," he said.

I groaned. Since I was in my female rat form anyway, I said, "Fine. We'll go on a date sometime. But don't expect anything-" I shuddered in disgust. "God, I can't believe I just said that."

Scientists must be right about men losing testosterone and gaining estrogen after sex.

"I think you'll change your mind after the first couple," Sneezer said.

I reddened. "Excuse me?"

"I want _dates_. As in _plural_." He pronounced that last word `ploo ral,' making it even ickier. "I'll provide your down payment if you agree to go out with me every day for a month."

"That's way too much Sneezer," I said. "Even people in love get tired of seeing the other person's face occasionally."

Sneezer looked surprised by that statement, as if the idea never occurred to him. "Twice a week for a month?"

"Getting warmer," I said.

"Once...a week...for two months."

"Deal," I sighed.

"And I get to watch the next time you have sex."

I rolled my eyes. "Fine."

I figured that would be just as likely as me sleeping with Sneezer anyway.

Actually, _twice as likely_.

I decided `cheating' or even `a double date' where I date a cute doodle while he dates me in my rat form, might be okay if I didn't mention it until I had the down payment.

Okay, so, no pressure. I led the mouse back into the building, which was still full of colored smoke, approaching the desk.

As in most cartoons, there was an inconsistency, for now the scary demonic smoke was actually the product of a cigar the creature gnawed between his teeth.

Noticing the guy's name was on a plaque, I said, "Frank. I got your down payment."

I pushed Sneezer up to the demon.

The mouse's eyes were big as saucers. His legs were trembling. I could see he wanted to bolt any minute.

"I think you're lying about that diaper," I muttered. "You probably you just used it right now."

The mouse nervously squeaked, "Uh-huh."

"What's a down payment?" the demon said.

I looked at him like he were an idiot, which, apparently, was true.

"I can see now why you let those cats get away with murder in your junkyard."

The monster's eyes widened. "They've actually killed someone? Oh my God!"

"Not literally," I said, rolling my eyes. "_Anyway_, I have a _good faith payment _on the car, to show you we intend to pay of the rest."

"Oh!" Frank exclaimed. "A _down payment!_"

I stared at the creature's scaly fists and forearms. The guy seemed rather well designed for something that didn't appear in any cartoon show. They must have overworked that area and skimped in the brain department.

"I'm guessing you couldn't cut it in the `immortal souls for recording contracts' racket."

Frank appeared to agree. "Have you been talking to my brother?"

"No," I said. I felt the urge to weasel my way out of the contract by somehow outsmarting the guy, but I guess I wasn't that bright myself.

The demon frowned at Sneezer. "Is he your down payment?"

With my face, I gave him a "Maybe?"

Frank leaned closer. "Looks kind of _scrawny_. I don't think he'll go for very much on the Souls Market. _Yours_, on the other hand..."

I smacked my face. "If you don't want the mouse, how about the mouse's money?"

"All right," he said, extending his hand. "Let's see the money."

"I made a number two!" Sneezer whispered to me with his legs trembling.

"_Just hand him the money so we can get out of here!_" I urged. "Hopefully he won't mind a little (ahem) _dirty money_."

Sneezer handed him several stacks.

Mr. Big apparently could count money by sound, for he flipped through whole stacks and muttered amounts like he knew what he was counting.

At last he slapped the stacks on his desk and said, "That's two grand."

"Really?" I said, surprised. "It looked like a lot more than that!"

Frank shrugged. "It's mostly ones."

"Okay," I said. "Looks like I'm going to be on a hunt for the other eight grand."

I left him, returning to the dog.

"What's the verdict?" he asked me.

"I think I'm going to be needing that loan."

I pointed the dog's gun in the air and fired.

After a few moments of silently listening to generic _Heathcliff_ incidental music, in which I wondered if I were wasting my time, I suddenly heard the _William Tell Overture_, and a masked man on a white horse galloped up to me.

"Whoa, Silver," he cried.

The horse and rider looked like something out of _Dudley Do Right_. The only thing that instilled confidence was the fact he seemed to be from the realm of innocent cartoons like _Rocky and Bullwinkle_, in which you could tell who a shifty crook was by how much they spoke with a Russian accent and twirled their handlebar mustache.

The horse stopped, and he dismounted, tipping back his hat.

"Howdy! I came as soon as I saw the signal! Who needs a loan?"

I felt fairly certain my eyes were going to pop out of my head from rolling so much.

"I'm the one," I said, cringing a little.

The Loan Arranger slapped Silver's rump. "Hop on. I'll take you to the field office."

A cartoon horse is far more docile and accommodating than a real one, so I got on right away without a problem. As for riding bitch, that part really couldn't be helped.

The Loan Arranger's `field office' was on the side of a mountain inside a poster on a fence. The horse actually jumped into the poster, carrying us up a rocky pass to a pair of tipis along a hill.

Inside one of these tipis, I came across an actual loan office, complete with desks and computers, and posters for various kinds of loans. A grumpy looking Indian occupied the main desk, clad in the stereotypical brave's headdress and buckskin ribbon shirt.

"Who is this, Kemosabe?" he asked.

"A new customer," the Loan Arranger said. "Car loan. Eight thousand."

I had told him the amount on the way up. Oddly enough, he called me `sweet thing' and `sugar' even when I wasn't in my rat form. Maybe that wasn't so odd, considering comedian Lenny Bruce's take on the whole Lone Ranger/Tanto relationship. But I digress.

"Get him the paperwork and send him down with the check, will you, Tanto? I've got another customer at the Spooky Old Amusement Park."

He wasn't going to hang around. I suppose I _did_ change into a female rat a little too much.

Tanto gave him a nod. "I make good deal for you, Kemosabe!"

"Thank you, Tanto."

And he mounted his horse, shouting, "Hi yo Silver! your credit card problems away!" as he galloped off.

"He always does that," Tanto groaned, shaking his head.

I won't bore you with the details, except to say that the due date was completely arbitrary. It seemed you could pay anytime you want without penalty. Well, unless Masked Man brokered in indentured servants (i.e. impossibly high interest rates) or kept things in escrow like they do with Green Tree home loans, so you couldn't get anywhere.

At any rate, thanks to my `Indian guide,' I came down the mountain with a check for eight thousand, presenting the check to Frank.

Thunder crashed as junkyard manager filed away the check.

The moment I stepped out of the junkyard office, the background music stopped, and the lighting around me suddenly dimmed.

When I looked up, I saw a formation of swirling clouds, kind of like a tornado, except there was no funnel, as if someone had cast one of those spells from _The Black Cauldron_, or maybe that awful movie with Macaulay Culkin where he hits his head in a library and a sword drops out of the clouds.

The monuments of junk in the Cat-illac Cats' junkyard shook as if in the throes of a giant earthquake, and for the first time in, what, two seasons, the mounds of accumulated debris actually _moved_, the televisions and Fiats and discarded entertainment centers rolling down mountains of trash like boulders during a volcanic eruption.

Leroy, with chattering teeth, dove through the window of a rusty 1950's style Ford pickup, cowering in fear somewhere below the console.

There was a flash of lightning, then I saw..._real clouds,_ pouring down rain.

It flickered animated once more, like nothing had happened, and I thought everything was fine, until lightning flashed again, and I found myself standing in an actual garbage dump, watching a truck unloading about give tons of rotting post consumer waste on top of an already massive mound. Birds flew down from PVC vent pipes, pecking at the rancid trash. The smell was intolerable.

Lightning flashed, and I was back in Cool World. Only now, I had company.

In the air above the Cat-illac Cats' home, I saw four figures in red, hovering of the junk piles like gods. The blue faces and red outfits reminded me of the Green Guardians from Green Lantern, but they looked funny.

Hovering over the east was a blue koala bear. To the west was a blue cat. To the north, a German shepherd, and to the south, a blue version of Glomer from _It's Punky Brewster_, sort of a fat hairy gopher, if you don't remember the show. All of them had glowing eyes, looking rather ominous and intimidating.

As they floated, they levitated televisions, tires, and other pieces of junk around them like force fields.

It was the cat who spoke first, its voice sounding like a female demonic ghost from one of those horror themed Japanese cartoons. Lots of echo, lots of reverb. "The integrity of this reality has been compromised," it said. "Who has weakened our reality?"

"Come forward!" Glomer called in his weird voice. "So you may see the end of all things!"

I marched up to the mountain, raising my hands. "I bought the car, okay? Never mind that my dad and I slept with doodles, and my ex girlfriend might even now be screwing with your genotypes at the baby factory! You're getting after me for a legitimate automotive sale!"

The four creatures floated silently, as if considering my words.

"Your actions unravel ancient plot paradigms," the German shepherd said in the voice of _He-Man_'s Sorceress. "The resulting vacuum will cause major portions of Cool World to collapse in on themselves, possibly causing the end of our reality."

"Like I was telling the demon," I said. "I don't see what the big problem is. Just make up a new story where they own the car and move on."

"Are you a writer?" the cat asked.

"Well," I said. "Not really."

"Then all of Cool World will be lost. All that is, was, and ever will be animated will cease to exist."

"So," I said. "_Not good_, I admit, but I know the world is surprisingly resilient. I think it will manage without cartoons, and I can't say I won't love to see what happens to the Disney Vault. That being said, what about me?"

"If you are human, you will be returned to the reality that birthed you."

"And if I'm not?"

"Then you will be erased from existence with everyone else."

"Either that," Glomer said. "Or half your body will disappear, and you will die from the missing vital organs."

This was not something I ever expected to hear coming out of Glomer's mouth. In any other situation, I would have been entertained, but now I was only scared.

"So," I said. "_No pressure._"

They bobbed up and down in the air, making no noise, waiting for me to solve their problem, I guess.

"Okay, okay," I said. "You got me! I'm a writer."

"Then write a replacement plotline to go into the vacuum."

"Uh, okay," I said.

I suck at writing , so I just threw them the first thing off the top of my head. "Riffraff was amazed when Drew brought him the title to his beloved Cadillac..."

"Weak!" the koala yelled. "Never start out a story with a character's name!"

"You didn't even introduce the characters!" Glomer said.

"I thought you said you were a writer!"

I cleared my throat. "The Child Like Empress's name is Serena! It means Moon Child!"

They just stared at me. I guess they had never seen _The Neverending Story_.

"I was hoping that would work," I groaned. "Why can't _you guys_ write something? Surely in a committee of floating superpowerful beings, _someone_ should be able to come up with a replacement story full of interesting conflicts and plot twists."

"We _could_," said the cat. "But you won't like it."

"So what else is new?" I said. "There's a _lot_ of things that have happened to me as of late that I _haven't liked at all!_ Just take out your little typewriters and hammer out a script!"

Glomer actually did wiggle his ears and make a typewriter float in the air, but the others scowled at him.

"What!"

"_We have run out of ideas_," said the cat.

"Our inkwell has run dry," said the koala.

I frowned. "Does this have something to do with our attempt to remove the cartoon from my system? I mean, we _did_ drain some ink from the spike..."

They stared at me silently, like I had guessed the correct answer.

"C'mon," I said. "I only took maybe a couple gallons worth. There's other spikes. This place is _huge_. Surely that isn't a problem."

"We also have been _blocked_," said the German shepherd. "From the outside."

"As long as this barrier stands," the koala said. "Our idea resources remain severely diminished."

I pointed at the sky. "Is that a brainstorm?" I asked dryly.

Of course they said yes.

"What if I..._toss you_ a few ideas? Maybe get those neurons firing again?"

"You are welcome to try," said the cat.

I opened my mouth, and random ideas tumbled out.

The four hovered in silence for a long time, and then lightning exploded all around me.

"It has been done!" Glomer announced.

"We will not make use of your suggestions," the cat said.

"But your ideas provide a valuable framework with which to build better, more profitable storylines and character arcs," the German shepherd added. "For the time being, you have restored the ink reservoir."

The eyes of all four creatures glowed bright as car headlights, and a thick fog rolled through the dump and the surrounding landscape, concealing the nearby hills, the buildings, the garbage piles, and everything else in an opaque red-purple wall.

The four floating creatures vanished like ghosts in Japanese cartoons, and as they did the fog started clearing.

In the distance, I saw a pair of large buildings taking shape, a square gray two story structure with mirrored windows, and a taller glass and steel building.

As the objects gained definition, I heard that song they always play in _Indiana Jones_ films when Indy uncovers a huge treasure chamber or some other awe inspiring secret vault.

The clouds vanished, and I could at last read the signs on the fronts of the buildings.

One said Legitimate Solution Services Inc. The other read, Ewes Bank.

It looked so similar to my previous places of employment that I at once knew what they were. Telephone customer service and collections businesses.

"Good Lord," I said. "What are they going to do with _that?_"

"Your guess is as as good as mine," Sneezer said in a deep male voice behind me.

Surprised, I spun around and saw...that _he had grown up_.

He was now my height, and he had a swirl of shiny black hair between his large ears.

Still clad in his space pajamas, he had grown into a reasonably handsome doodle.

"They were right," I muttered. "They didn't use my ideas."

Sneezer shrugged. "Maybe they used mine."

That's when I see an armada of storks bearing strange looking babies, to the tune of _Ride of the Valkyries_.

I couldn't see much from my vantage point, but I could tell from a glance that the storks' parcels seemed _curiously well shaded_.

I pointed to them. "Was _that_ your idea too?"


	39. Chapter 39: Hammer Space

Okay, so maybe I should've not insisted so much on letting other people write my life for me.

But then again, the last time I wrote fiction, it was in high school, and, well, my teacher and classmates basically implied that I shouldn't quit my day job, so to speak. My characters were too flat, there wasn't enough conflict, and there wasn't enough of a `hook' to draw people into the first paragraph, let alone the first chapter.

So maybe I figured, in this fictional universe, I should rely on people (or beings) who knew the craft better than me.

I suppose, if I had gotten my way, Cool World would have become sort of a hamboned, wholly uninspired environment, like the one in _Neverending Story 3_ (Direct to Video) or _The Pagemaster_ (Direct to Trash Can), but life would have been _a lot_ easier.

Instead, well, I found myself with a _new boyfriend_.

Sure, _he'd grown_, hopefully gotten potty trained...but _yuck_.

Plus, I'm a _guy_. Sure, I _tended to turn into a female rat quite a bit_, but I still was male the rest of the time. _Double yuck_.

And then there were those strange yet oddly familiar buildings. It was almost like they could read the cartoon part of my brain and pull stuff out of it.

When I first came up with the idea of buying the car, I thought I could just slap down the cartoon money, and maybe find some kind of job in Cool World that would pay for the rest, whether it be counting the number of times Wiley Coyote blew himself up for the insurance company, or using a file to shave down a yeti's callouses and corns (I would have done it).

Now, it seemed, I would be reliving my past to earn the money. Provided they were an EOE, that is.

And then there were the _babies_. Were _babies_ part of my curse? Or was this the result of what I saw on Dane's drawing? Either way, it didn't look good.

I couldn't get a clear view of them. The babies were not exactly reachable, and I really didn't want to grab them anyway, lest they attach themselves to me as their parent.

"Drew..." Sneezer said, batting his eyes at me.

As a rat, I said, "It doesn't bother you at all that I was originally a male, human, and don't like men?"

Sneezer shook his head.

I supposed, if you were such a loser that you still wore diapers and lived your sex life vicariously through other people, it wouldn't.

He lost the mood for me when I turned into Bufo frog in a clown costume. I could tell because his lovesick expression dropped with a sound like characters on _Ren and Stimpy_ make when looking down on something in disgust. Sort of a squishy balloon sound.

"And you want to date me for two months."

"Maybe there's a pattern to it," he said. "And if I can figure it out..."

I rolled my eyes. "_Then you'll know what day of the week to go out._"

I sighed. "Right. _Well_. I guess I have slave duty."

I knocked on the Ford. "You can come out now! The floating guys are gone!"

Leroy shakily opened the door, staggering out.

"So..." I said. "Uh...I hear you know something about _slave costumes_."

My sister was pretty much the only reason why I troubled myself with this. Maybe, if I had been more honest, I would have just admitted that maybe I still liked my sister in ways that weren't appropriate, and I wanted to impress her. Plus, I hadn't met any other female that quite compared to her.

"_I might_," he said. "What, did you gamble against him too?"

He could tell by the look on my face that my answer was yes.

"How long did he get you for?"

"A year," I said.

Leroy chuckled. "Sounds like you got off lucky. Mine was closer to ten."

"I'm guessing that didn't happen while your show was on," I said.

He looked astonished. "There was a _show_?"

I just shook my head. "So what did they have _you_ do all that time?"

"Well," he said. "I had to look a lot dumber than I actually am, and let them get away with things I normally wouldn't. A couple times, I did the whole bit with fanning him with a leaf and what have you..."

"That explains a lot," I muttered.

Leroy narrowed his eyes. "What's that supposed to mean?"

I told him about the cartoon and the DVD's.

"_Wow_," he said. "That's kind of..._creepy._"

I shrugged. "If it's any consolation, it didn't last more than a couple seasons."

"Thank God for that!" he laughed, slapping me on the back. "Since you'll be working here for a year, you'll have plenty of time to tell me what you've been spying on."

"To tell you the truth, sir," I said. "My recollection is very foggy. I haven't watched _Heathcliff _since I was a kid. I probably have all the details wrong. Oh. They _did_ put it on cable once, but I can't even remember the funny joke they had on it."

"Well," said Leroy. "Maybe something will jog your memory. If you know something about me, you'd know that me and_ those cats_ have always had an _uneasy relationship_, to put it mildly."

Glancing around, I suddenly noticed that there were strange ceremonial artifacts scattered here and there among the junk piles. A skull on a pike, a ceremonial candle holder, Skeletor's Havok Staff.

I pointed to one of them, but Leroy only said, "Your guess is as good as mine. This place probably would have been better off if you never bought that car."

He sighed. "All right. Let me show you the slave shop."

He led me across the junkyard to the trunk of a beat up 1976 El Dorado, flipping it open.

"After you," he said.

When I looked inside, I saw literally nothing, just a white blank space where something should have been.

"I don't understand," I said.

"It's Hammer Space," Leroy said. "You're not supposed to understand. Jump in."

"What if that...erases me?"

"It won't," he said, waving me on.

"I'm a noid! How do you know it won't hurt me?"

He had no answer for that.

I stuck my leg through the open trunk, watching with relief as my foot continued to be my foot as it made contact with the white thing.

"It's okay. It's safe," he said. "Lord knows I've been down there enough."

I climbed lower and found myself dangling in what felt like zero gravity, or maybe a swimming pool. There was no bottom, nor anything I could grab or set my feet down upon.

"Just let go!" Leroy said. "It doesn't hurt."

"How will we get back out?" I asked.

"Just find a hole. They're everywhere."

Reluctantly, I did what he said, and found myself floating gently down onto a floor in a white void.

The dog joined me.

"This is great," I said, unenthused. "Where's all the hammers, guns and giant bananas?"

"Just wait a few," he said.

I did, and suddenly I see a gigantic warehouse rushing up around me in the style of that scene in _The Matrix_ where the guy, in a white void, calls up a million digital gun racks...or those countless similarly styled commercials for online discount retailers you see on TV.

Of course, what I saw weren't gun racks, or brand name apparel at discount prices. It was more like a warehouse for UPS.

Actually, none of those descriptions are quite adequate, so let me clarify.

Hammerspace is filled with metal cages, manned by octupii, genies, Cthulhu, primates and little green men, among other things. These cages are the size of studio apartments, filled with objects of various sizes, for comedic effect, I suppose.

The characters inside these places would pick up things like a lit stick of dynamite, a puppy, or a puppy with a lit stick of dynamite in its mouth, shoving it through a hole in front of them, or place them in the palm of a reaching hand.

Certain zones were separated out for seriousness, and I could see army guys grabbing large machine guns and such from their cages. I couldn't quite tell which cage belonged to the heroine of _Fear Effect_, but I imagined _someone_ had to help her pull that huge machine gun out of her bikini.

Other cages, I supposed, were for the more lighthearted characters, for the cage partner would just grab something at random, like a horse or the magician's colored scarf gimmick, placing it into the hand.

In one cage, I saw the cross eyed octopus from the Cap'n Crunch commercials giggling as he shoved a stick of broccoli into a gorilla's palm.

Running alongside all these sets of cages, I could see sets of conveyor belts. Groups of horned monkeys jumped from conveyor to conveyor, shoving things into cages, whether it be a set of keys or a huge yacht. A lot of it didn't seem to fit, but you know how cartoons always squeeze and squish things down to fit any size, all without breaking anything.

Hearing a noise behind me, I looked back and saw Sneezer had followed me, chomping a piece of cheese he swiped from a conveyor.

I pretended he wasn't there.

The cages went up several stories, with elevators and winch systems pulling supplies from the lower floors. I hoped to find the origin of all these bizarre and completely unrelated objects, but, alas, the bottommost conveyors were fed by giant glass tubes, which came out of the fog covered flooring I stood upon.

"I still have no clue," the dog said. "Doodles have fanned the fog and felt around the floor, but the source is unreachable."

The tube swelled like a python, spitting out a tank.

Well, those _do_ pop out of Hammerspace from time to time.

It seemed the most popular items were roaring lion heads, which a flying monkey puppeted through this hole or that, a demonic version of the stage magician's rabbit, or, most famously, _a giant wooden hammer_, though I'd personally describe them as _mallets_.

Speaking of mallets, some items appeared to be so well used by a character that they were kept on a special rack, which their `caddy' or a machine would reach into to arm the Hammerspace unit's owner. Guns, whips, and in a couple cases, five kinds of cream pies, a bottle of seltzer water, and a China cup and saucer they probably used for a Harpo Marx routine.

"C'mon," Leroy muttered. "If we hang around too much, we'll either get shoved out of someone's pocket or get roped into a shift change."

He took a lit cigarette off a conveyor belt and puffed it as he glanced at me.

"I wouldn't reach into your pockets, if I were you. You'll cause a recursion and mess up the whole system. I ruined a good hat and a pair of pants that way. I'd stick in a pair of mailbox keys and pull out a can of spinach, a piece of Kryptonite, Aquaman's shark whistle, or a makeup kit."

We walked down the rows of cages, watching, with growing disinterest, as many of the same items got recycled and shoved into various reaching hands.

The dog stopped in front of a stone archway reminding me of the vault doors to Egyptian tombs. Inside, I found a sort of department store, full of nothing but various kinds of slave apparel.

One section held rather raggedy things, to give the wearer that "I just got kidnapped by an evil overlord and abused for ten years" look. Ripped X-Men costumes, `distressed' jeans and shirts, worn out _Planet of the Apes_ outfits.

Another section held skimpy leather things, for_ those kind of slaves_.

A whole wall contained nothing but dog collars, manacles and chains. The instruments of abuse, such as whips and billy clubs, were all locked in a big glass cabinet, which you apparently only could access by flashing a slave master badge.

They had togas, wooly mammoth skins, Hebrew slave costumes (Egyptian outfits), and a section for scifi slaves (right behind the skimpy leather things, for some of them _are_ in both categories). There was also a medieval section.

"So where's your little bird friend?" Sneezer asked.

My shirt rustled for a moment, and I heard a voice singing, "I hear you knocking, but you can't come in..."

"I think he's just scared because-"

Suddenly Extra exploded from my clothes, batting my face with his wings, singing, "Don't speak, I know what you're thinking..."

Instead of singing the rest, he dove back into my shirt.

"Sorry, Extra," I muttered.

"So what did they tell you to wear?" Leroy asked.

Not wanting to even say what it was, I lied and said, "A Roman toga."

Leroy stared at me. "Really? Sounds like they let you off easy."

"I only played baseball," I said.

"He's lying," said Sneezer. "They said French maid."

Leroy chuckled, but didn't seem surprised. I glared at Sneezer. Of course, I suppose I should be grateful that he didn't say "Skimpy leather thing."

The dog led me over to a rack full of French maid outfits, handing one that looked roughly my size.

I frowned at the dress, the stockings, then glanced at the cage walls covered in shackles, feather dusters and cleaning equipment.

"I can't believe I'm saying this," I said as Scouter Drew. "But where's the changing rooms?"

"Just pull it down over your clothes," said Sneezer. "_Unless you're the rat_. Then you can take off your clothes. I won't mind." And he batted his eyes at me.

"I, uh, frequently change shape and turn human. What will happen if I change while wearing it?"

"I don't know," said Leroy. "What happens to your clothing normally?"

"It stays on whatever form I dress it with."

As if to contradict me, my Scouter Drew form now wore a Def Leppard shirt in khakis.

Being animated, the dress had no real zippers or buttons. It was just sort of a stretchy thing you pulled over your head. Once I had it on, it snapped to my body shape, concealing my rock shirt and making my jeans disappear. I probably looked like Webelos Woody raiding his sister's closet or something.

"If you want your old clothes back," Leroy said. "Just step into a phone booth or a bathroom. Unless you come across a musical special effects sequence, but those are rare."

I didn't laugh, or even stare at him. I didn't doubt it any more than I would doubt that the government charges you money for not having health insurance.

"Ugh," I groaned as I examined myself. "_That's it._ No heels. No stockings. This is gay enough."

"You might change your mind when you look in the mirror," Leroy said.

"So I actually look that gay?"

"_No._ Go check the mirror. You'll see what I'm talking about."

I frowned. "What's in the mirror?"

He led me over to one next to a rack full of slave melody songbooks, showing me my reflection.

I had transformed into Tinkerbell's black haired wingless cousin.

Petite, freckled pixie's face, frizzy hair tied up in a ponytail. I couldn't place who it was, but, minus the freckles, I resembled an actress I had seen in an old 1970's movie.

Not a bad look, I dare to say even a bit sexy.

I pulled on the heels and stockings.

A second later, a rat's tail burs out of the back of my skirt, my face elongating into a muzzle.

My skin changed color (I guess I was too dainty for hairy pen lines), and I became French Maid Rat.

Still kind of sexy.

In fact, Sneezer was doing that shtick cartoons do when they get kissed by a supermodel, panting and melting into a puddle on the floor. I decided to ignore it.

Extra, apparently surprised by the change of wardrobe, popped out my top to whistle at me.

I rolled my eyes. "Oh please, Extra. It's just me."

"Yes, master, but still..."

And then he remembered his faux pas. "Oh shit."

A second later, a woman's hand whipped out of my bodice, clamping its fingers around the little bird's body.

"Master, help!" he screamed as the hand pulled him into my dress. "Help!"

"Oh no you don't!" I yelled, grabbing onto the wrist that was sticking out.

That's when things got really weird.

When the hand pulled Extra into my bodice, it pulled _me_ in along with it.

But wait. I was _wearing_ the bodice!

Such things, it seems, are not important to cartoons, for suddenly my arm turns taffy and goes all the way into my own dress.

Then the hand defies all rules of anatomy and physiology by _twisting my shoulder around_, sucking it into a part of the dress that probably should be at least a little bit occupied by the same shoulder, and then the spine, which definitely should still be wearing the dress it was being pulled into.

My legs to in, my arm, and finally my head, and I feel my entire body whirling around and around like I were on an amusement park ride.

I heard a loud pop, which, I believe, was me winking out of existence.

For a moment, I felt sick, my body racked with agonizing pain, perhaps due to the fact I had turned real for a moment, but then I started thinking about that Bugs Bunny cartoon where the magician smacks him with a blackberry pie and Bugs sings that song about an "angel in disguise", and I start singing it, wondering what moldy 1920's artist came up with that number, which made me into a doodle again. My guess is that I would have been dead otherwise.

I saw a flash, and for a minute, I thought I _had_ died, but then I found myself slamming down on a stretch of pavement on a darkened street.

It was an industrial district. On either side of me, I saw row upon row of shadowy factories, which puffed balls of exhaust out their smokestacks like snakes regurgitating bowling balls.

The buildings were not just belching smoke balls, they were also routinely pumping hundreds of objects through sets of massive glass tubes. This place, it would appear, was where all the stuff in Hammerspace came from.

Strangely, though, I still saw trucks moving around, perhaps to fill orders for Wiley Coyote.

I lay sprawled on the painted concrete as a real human in cartoon drag, groaning as I tried to get to my feet.

When I sat up, I saw that the factories all had names. Ninety percent of them said Acme, but there were a few weird ones, like Roddenberries, Morlox, or Personal Best.

I no longer had the hand, or the bird.

Afraid I might lose Extra forever, I pushed myself into a standing position just in time to see a familiar looking figure in a cape stomping away from me in her noisy high heels.

"Master!" I heard Extra yelling.

"Extra!" I cried, running down the street after him.

But I was still non-animated, so I got winded.

To make matters worse, I heard beeping behind me.

Meep meep!

At first, I thought it was the Roadrunner, because it was the same exact noise he always made on the cartoons.

No.

When I turned around, I saw a big delivery truck barreling straight towards me.

The flat, undetailed, generic sort of truck they always show on cartoons. The ones with no identifiable make or model.

I didn't have time to get away.


	40. Chapter 40: CC Knickknocker

Getting hit by that truck was painful.

I was non animated when it struck me. I thought for certain I had broken something.

The physics of this little collision did not make sense, but you probably already guessed that.

Instead of being flung a couple yards, to be flattened by the truck, I became a sort of human cannonball, zooming through the air until I hit a glass window on one of the nearby factories, apparently a bottling company.

I didn't see that much of the place, due to me being a human cannonball, but it basically a bunch of machinery pouring chemicals into other vats of chemicals, the absence of natural ingredients suggesting it was the Fanta company, maybe Vess.

The background music was, of course, _Powerhouse_ by Raymond Scott, played on an endless loop, just like any cartoon about a factory.

I landed in a tank full of bubbly brown liquid, wherein I was bent, spindled, folded and mutilated by stirring arms, compressors, and a host of other machinery.

I must have gone animated at some point, for my skeleton certainly wouldn't have survived the Taffy Puller, the Squisher, and other unpleasantries.

I found myself being poured into a bottle stoppered with an impossibly tight cap. Again, no human skeleton would have survived.

A mechanical arm slapped a Coo-Coo Cola label on my bottle, and I was shuffled down a conveyor belt. I tried to scream, but, of course, I was bottled. Realistically, I should have suffocated, but I was a doodle.

The music kept looping. Up ahead, I could see the machines that would package me and other bottles and take me away to be distributed somewhere. I didn't want to find out.

I'm guessing if I hadn't killed the Rescue Rangers, they might have rescued me.

I did the only thing I could think of. I shifted my weight back and forth until the bottle rocked and toppled off the conveyor belt.

I hit the concrete floor with a tremendous smash, glass scattering everywhere.

To my chagrin, my body still retained a bottle shape. I waddled awkwardly across the floor on one hand and one foot, rolling my cylindrical body sideways just in time to avoid an overzealous mechanical hand, and a generic Little Red Riding Hood with a broom.

The factory was crawling with generic fairy tale characters and robots. I saw at least three versions of Pinocchio, the Three Little Pigs, and Goldilocks, basically anything fairy tale related that wasn't Disney, except possibly the Little Mermaid, because she commits suicide in the non Disney version.

I rolled under a big square machine to hide from Mama Bear, falling through a crack and dropping down a diagonal slot in some machine or another, rolling down at high speed through another crack, until I landed in an underground prison.

It was a row of small metal cells, about the size of the kennels they make for large dogs.

Most of them contained cartoon characters I didn't recognize, and they seemed a bit..._suspicious_ to me. In fact, one of them was one of those apes Amanda had infected with leprosy.

I didn't want to know what was going on in there, and I didn't care. I shook myself several times, like my limbs had merely fallen asleep.

At last, I regained my human form with a loud pop.

That's when I noticed who the other prisoners were.

In the cage directly ahead of me, I saw another noid, a man with a long nose, large ears, and short dark hair, a perpetual smirk on the corner of his face. He was clad in one of those baggy short sleeved button shirts that he always seemed to be wearing in his movies.

And I'm standing in front of him dressed as a French maid.

His films were hit or miss. I recalled several parts of his movies in which I would just stare at the screen instead of laughing. In fact, when I watched _Eight Crazy Nights_, I wanted to get my money back.

"_Chocolate wasted_," I said.

"Nice outfit," he replied.

I rolled my eyes. "Shut up."

"Look," he said. "As you probably have guessed, I'm _Adam Sandler_, and they _need me back at the studio_. You've _got_ to get me out of here!"

"They don't really _need_ _you_ at that studio," I said. "They might _want_ you there, _but I don't_! In fact, I think you should probably _stay here_, until you can _figure out how to act_."

"That was _cold_," said Weird Al Yankovic, who was also a prisoner.

I didn't feel like rescuing that man, either. I figured a forced retirement would be good for him, especially in light of his performance on _Galavant_.

At the end of the prison, I found a staircase leading out. I decided it best to hurry that way before someone captured _me, _and forced me to endure endless half baked parody songs based on masturbation and whatever happens to be on the Billboard pop chart.

"That's right!" I heard Sandler yelling. "Go, fairy! We don't need your help!"

"_Actually_," said Al. "We _really do_ kind of need your help! You see, there's a _key in the office upstairs_..."

Instead of listening to the rest, I whistled _Peter and the Wolf_, marching up to the landing on the next floor.

Amanda was right. This kind of thing _was_ a turn on.

I found a fire exit, which, pleasantly enough, did not feature any puns, or alarms.

Not wanting to screw around in the wrong factory anymore, I shoved the door open, running down a fire escape.

Okay, so I had been delayed, and had no idea where to go.

Yes, I knew it was a place called C.C. Knickknocker, but it would take me awhile to find it, by which time someone would be grinding Extra's beak down to nothing.

The fire escape ended in an alleyway between the bottling plant and...Acme Anvils, judging by the traditional _Anvil Chorus_ clanging out the open window. Nearby, next to a dumpster, was a fenced in `butt hut' where Generic Sleeping Beauty and a dwarf puffed cigarettes, complaining about unreasonable metric quotas and manager Pinocchio's nose getting longer every day.

I hurried past them, crossing a parking lot to a street which probably contained rows of trucks ready to hit me the moment I set foot on the pavement.

It seemed Extra was in the habit of selective molting, for he had left a sort of feathery trail of bread crumbs.

So it could have been a different bird, but I felt fairly certain that any bird in the vicinity would be going to the same place, wherever it was.

I hugged the curbs of the factories I passed, making a supreme effort to avoid trucks and the street at all costs.

The gold feathers were easy to spot on the dark paint.

I thought I was doing okay until Big Bird tried to cross the street and a truck hit him. Gold feathers everywhere.

For a moment, I lost hope.

But then I noticed a gray object flying toward me.

Well, not really flying. _Gliding_. It looked very _tired_.

It was a shriveled gray bird with a white mustache and no beak. The creature bumped into my stomach, and would have fallen to the ground, had I not caught it.

The moment I did this, it climbed up my dress, nuzzling against my neck.

"Whoa. Hello?" I said.

"Are you the one who weeps for birds?" the creature whispered in my ear.

"On occasion," I muttered. "Have you seen a big golden bird?" Then, remembering the recent hit and run, I added, "Answers to the name Extra?"

"You _named my son!_" No Beak cried.

"Uh, sorry," I said. "I didn't know you guys already-"

"No, no," he said. "I am grateful. Which is why you must rescue him. You have A Listed him. He does not deserve to suffer in that sweat shop among the unknowns."

"If what I heard is true, _no bird_ deserves to work in that place. Where is this sweat shop, _Mack Daddy_?"

"So now you name _me_," the creature chuckled.

"You and Extra are family," I said. "I just thought I should. I know it's kind of lame, but it's kind of a spur of the moment thing."

"It is a great name," he said, pointing his wing ahead. "Keep going straight. I'll tell you where to turn."

A few blocks later, I found it.

It looked like a saw mill. Large semis loaded full of giant logs pulled into a massive square building that continually belched smoke and sawdust.

The rear of the building didn't have a sign, but an immense wooden kookoo rotated endlessly on the roof, bearing a wraparound logo reading `CCKK'.

I had become an animated little kid in drag, but my fists were still clenched as I marched up to that rear door.

It was locked, of course.

Conveniently, it was a code lock, the combination of musical button presses (which Mack Daddy provided) sounding like _Grandfather's Clock_ by Hank Snow.

"Ninety years without slumbering, tick tock..."

I pulled the door open, and entered with ease.

Mack Daddy took one look around, then dove into my bodice to hide.

To my surprise, I didn't hear _Powerhouse_. Instead, I heard _Circle of Life_, though it appeared to be more for the purpose of torture than theme music.

Scratch that. It was always for the purposes of torture.

This is generally how the assembly process went:

The giant logs were fed into a machine, then spun around in a giant lathe, which shaved the logs down to smaller logs by means of a dozen woodpeckers clamped to machine arms.

These smaller logs were then sliced into blocks using a large saw, made of woodpeckers clamped to a spinning wheel with their beaks wired outwards.

The blocks were then shipped down the various rows of conveyors, where birds, with their feet in chains, would chisel out wooden objects with their beaks. Kookoo clocks, table legs, bowling pins, chairs. I even saw an assembly line for baseball bats, where, presumably, Extra's aunt was imprisoned.

As I crept over that way, Mack Daddy chirped like a regular bird, and another gray bird, one with a dull but somewhat intact beak shook its head violently, hissing, "You should not be here! Go!"

And then a machine pressed her beak into a block of wood, shaving it down into a bat.

Behind me, I heard one of the birds musically call, "Oooh!"

A bird on the Kookoo line cried, "I...was...!"

"...Slippin' into darkness!" sang a bird working the bowling pins.

And then all the birds performed that song by War.

"They do that," Mack Daddy whispered. "It's all they can do to stay sane."

"Where's Extra?" I said.

Mack Daddy pointed to a corner of the factory, where a gang of chained bluebirds, and _baby bluebirds_, pecked small blocks of wood into toothpicks.

The birds were guarded by a group of ugly looking goblin slavemasters. Tall, warty sorts of creatures that reminded me of the basketballer villains from _Space Jams_.

I surveyed the scene, checking for exits, or ways I could overpower the guards and free my little friend.

The factory was patrolled by faceless blue men clad from head to foot in blue, from their uniforms to their shoes. From their faces, I couldn't tell if they could see me or anything. But then again, I couldn't tell what they _couldn't see_.

For the most part, as I wandered around, they had just ignored me. A couple would march around a corner to observe me, _or not observe me_. I asked Mack Daddy about it, but he just shushed me.

My hopes of a rescue were dashed when I felt that tap on my shoulder.

When I turned around, I saw Miss Terious, her butler, and a gang of blue men.

"Mmyes?" said Sleez.

"What are you doing in my factory?" the woman asked.

"Quality control," I blurted. "These..._floors_ are very dusty."

"I'll tell the janitor," she said indifferently. "You're not here because of some _poor little birdies_, are you?" she said with a false pout.

"_Oh no_!" I said in a facetious tone. "I was just wondering why you didn't use more _child labor_..."

She tapped her chin, looking thoughtful. "Why indeed!" And she took a notepad out of her exoskeleton bikini, jotting down the idea.

"Look," I said. "This is a great evil business and all, but you took my friend prisoner and I'm going to have to ask you to give him back."

She frowned. "I have to admit you A Listed him, but you're a half doodle, so I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

If that wasn't bad enough, she quickly added, "Oh, and you're going to have to give that old mustached thing back. We don't have any use for him, but he knows the code to the door."

"Due to the inconvenience, I wasn't going to bring up this point," I said. "But have you thought about simply changing the code? I mean, _I_ know the code too. I could just take Mac Daddy home, to a nice bird shelter..."

"You're right," she said. But then she nodded to the goblins. "Kill them both."

In real life, they probably would have just shot me and saved time.

Instead, I get chained to a log next to No Beak, and guess what? This log is on a track ending in an actual non bird powered circular saw that could more than likely slice me in half along with the log I'm chained to.

The saw starts up, the blade moving closer and closer to my head as it rips through the pared down tree.

All of a sudden, I heard a weird noise: "Who-oo-oo!"

I see a puff of smoke near the roof of the warehouse, and then a `twip' sound as something hits a wall, clatters uselessly to the floor, and whips back to the roof again.

This happens two more times, then I see a cable embed itself in a nearby pipe, spraying water all over the floor.

I hear another "Who-hoo-oo" and then I see her:

Owl Woman!

A woman in a bird costume. Apparently modeled after _a barn owl_, her suit was feathery like a Mardi Gras costume, with charcoal leggings and Tabi boots with grappling hook claws. She had a giant O on her chest.

The mask looked ridiculous. Giant ringed eyes, a gray nose appliance and an open lower face like a Bat Suit.

Like Batman, she used the cable as a zip cord to cross the room quickly.

Unlike Batman, the handlebar thingy broke off in her hands at the halfway point, wherein she fell screaming to the floor.

A moment later, she's trussed up below my feet, ready to be sawn in half a few seconds after that big blade finishes slicing through my ankles.

Craning my neck, I look down at the figure in gray, with her ridiculous plastic bird beak and say, "My hero."

Owl Woman just glares at me. "Shut up."


	41. Chapter 41: PETA Pan

Miss Terious and her butler disappeared into the upstairs office, leaving me to my fate.

I glanced down at my feet. "_Margaret Shusher_."

"Yes?" Owl Woman blurted, but then she quickly cleared her throat and said, "That name sounds..._oddly familiar_. It puzzles me why you would mention such a name in my presence..." She trailed off.

The saw kept coming closer.

"Unless?" I prompted.

"Unless you happen to be a patron of the Cool World Cedar Roe Library."

"What?" I said.

"People _do_ say my voice sounds a lot like Shusher's. But you needn't be confused. I and Shusher are merely friends, and sometimes when two friends hang out together for a long time, they start to sound alike."

Not wanting to keep this charade up any longer, I said, "Look, _Margie_. I know who you are. My dad bought your lemon of a minivan and your name badge was in the back seat. I don't need to be a genius to figure out who you are."

"Lemon!" she shouted. "My Owlmobile has a mobile surveillance center! It has _wings and jet engines_!"

"So do some versions of the Batmobile. But those actually go back in, _or stay out_ so you can actually use them! Plus your car is a minivan! What, are you _Bat Soccer Mom_?"

It appeared I struck I nerve. She fell silent for a moment.

"But yeah," I said. "I figured it out. You're as convincing as Superman putting on glasses and pretending to be Clark Kent."

"Oh God!" she cried. "I promised him I wouldn't tell anyone! I _promised_!"

"What?"

"Superman told me to never divulge his secret identity."

I shook my head. "Relax, lady. That cat got out of the bag a long time ago. My point is, he's not fooling anyone, and neither are you. Now, do you have some sort of Owl Boomerang, or an Owl Saw or something to get us out of these chains?"

"No," she said. "But those do sound like _very good ideas_."

I groaned. "Then what _do_ you have?"

"The love of reading?"

"That's not going to help," I said.

"What do you mean, it's not going to help! Why, with a little research-"

"I mean, it won't do us any good _right now_. For starters, you should have _researched_ the building before busting in here."

She sighed. "I have a Fine Gun."

I'm sure there's a great pun in there somewhere, but I just said, "As in library fines?"

"Yes. According to my records, Miss Terious checked out a copy of _Green Eggs and Ham_ seventeen years ago, and still hasn't returned it. She also dog eared a copy of _The Five Hundred Hats of __Bartholomew Cubbins, _and then there's the audiobook of _Sense and Sensibility..._

I rolled my eyes. "Is that why you're here?"

"Why else? I wouldn't break into a heavily guarded facility like this just to save _your_ sorry posterior!"

"Look," I sighed. "Just...figure something out so we don't end up..._bisected._"

"Impressive! I had no idea you were capable of such vocabulary!"

"Could you please _impress me_ and find us a way out of here?"

She did not.

So. Chained to a log, about to be sliced in half, to the tune of that shitty song from _The Lion King_.

I was pretty well done for. I wasn't animated at the moment, so I couldn't, I don't know, _stretch my arms around the log_, or _whip my hands out of the cuff to pick my nose_, or whatever Roger Rabbit would do to free his hands in this situation.

I tried to sing myself into a doodle, but the first things that came to mind were _Paint It Black, Don't Fear the Reaper, and Don't Pay the Ferryman._

And then, everything stopped. The conveyor, the birds, everything.

The lights went down, and a bunch of disco lights came on.

A familiar looking warthog and meerkat appeared on top of one of the machines, armed with microphones.

An orchestra started up, and they sang this song:

"If you really love your work, you'll make a better world

The money will keep rolling in, your plans will all unfurl

So everyone, be optimists, keep smiling at your desk

`Cause if you keep on smiling, your ship will come in next..."

And so on.

The machinery started back up, the birds doing their assigned tasks to the music.

Blue men hid the chains holding the birds down, others disguising the bird saws.

A second later, the office door came open.

"Everyone look lively!" Pumbaa barked. "The next bird with a frowning face will be in the discard oven!"

And then he sang, "If you build a better mousetrap, they'll hurry to your door..."

And so on.

The music was original, but I'd just as soon allow myself to be sliced in half than repeat all the stupid lyrics.

I saw a pair of slender legs stepping out of the office, and then, _there she was_.

I thought for a moment she was some sort of she-villain, like Harley Quinn or Evil Lynn.

She was animated, she had on a cape with a skull brooch, and a black bikini, elbow length gloves, and boots that cinched way above the knees.

But then her body flickered, and I saw a human standing there.

When I remembered Dane's drawing, I suddenly put two and two together.

"Jessica!" I yelled. "Jessica!"

For a couple minutes, she just ignored me. Miss Terious was giving them a tour of the facility, and they were _fascinated_. I was glad I was in a Slow Moving Death Trap. I probably would have been dead otherwise.

Mr. Eyepatch Guy was with the girl, of course, walking around with a baby carrier strapped over his stomach.

The baby looked human.

Ish.

It was rather disturbing, actually. Although non-animated, the infant had long floppy ears, like (presumably) the father. It had a muzzle, and its eyes didn't look right for a human baby, more rounded and golf ball like. It was like a cartoon character covered in human flesh.

Remember that scene in the _Twilight Zone_ movie where the boy makes his cartoon characters turn real in a grotesque and disturbing sort of way? It was kind of like someone had sex with _that_ and had a baby.

I didn't have the luxury of mocking at the moment. All I could do was yell and hope Jessica heard me.

"Chad!" I suddenly heard Owl Woman yelling.

I stared down at her. "You know that guy?"

"I..." she stammered. "Let's just say I do, and leave it at that."

"Fine by me," I said with a shrug, and we yelled the two over to us.

The blade was now a foot from my head.

Jessica spun around, staring at me.

Her mouth fell open in shock. "_Drew?_"

"Yeah! A little help, please?"

"Drew!" she laughed. She marched closer, but didn't lift a finger to help. "What are _you_ doing here?"

"It's a long story and I'm short on time!" I nodded to the saw.

"Chad?" Ms. Shusher said.

The kangaroo looked horrified. "Owl Woman! What have they done to you?"

"Shut up and help us!" I and Owl Woman yelled in unison.

Jessica grabbed a lever and pulled.

It was the wrong lever. The blade sounded angry now.

"No no!" I shouted. "Shut it off!"

I swear I could feel the blade brushing air particles next to my hair.

As Jessica peered at the controls, the log rolled further down the conveyor.

Now I felt the blade tugging at my hair.

She slammed her palm down on a large button.

The saw blade stopped with a noisy alarm bell. I and Owl Woman sighed in relief.

"Turn that back on!" Miss Terious shouted. "They're saboteurs!"

Jessica crossed her arms. "If they are, they're very stupid ones."

"Hey!" I cried.

Ignoring me, Jessica continued. "I doubt very seriously that Mr. Deebes can sabotage anything. Even with Moth Woman here, I can't imagine it happening."

Miss Terious sighed. "I suppose you're right..."

She clapped her hands, and a group of blue goons unshackled us.

The moment he was free, Mack Daddy dove into my dress and hid there.

I climbed down, staring at Jessica. "So...I guess...you and Mr. Eyepatch..."

She nodded. "It was _awesome_."

Feeling slightly ill, I frowned at the baby. "_I see._"

Of course, then I flickered and turned into the little red tin can robot from _Ulysses 39_.

"Who did _you_ sleep with?" she asked. "Please don't say Rosie the Robot."

"My sister," I muttered. "_Half sister_, to be precise."

She burst out laughing. "So...uh..."

Cool World's official historian and researcher had to stop and figure that one out.

"So your dad...slept with..."

"_Holli Would_," I said. "She used to be completely animated. Getting the picture?"

She furrowed her brow for a moment, then smacked the side of her head. "Of course! That makes perfect sense!"

Then she looked confused again. "Did you...not know she was your sister, or did you know she was and slept with her anyway?"

"I seriously didn't know," I said. "Now, I think I should probably make a graceful exit before..."

I glanced at Extra apologetically.

Owl Woman looked down at Chad's baby carrier and smiled. "You have a very beautiful baby."

"Thank you," said Jessica. "I made it myself."

"Si," Chad said. "Thank you."

Owl Woman sighed, looking into his eyes. "I just want to know something. Do you love her? Is this something long term?"

Chad frowned. "Why is this any concern of yours?"

The woman put a hand on her feathery hip. "_I think you know why this is my concern._"

The kangaroo looked like he were concentrating really hard. "Because..._you're a superhero._"

"No, Chad," she said. "_Try again._"

He still had that stupid look on his face.

Jessica was covering her mouth, suppressing a giggle.

"You..." Chad's eyes darted back and forth. "No. This is not possible. You are a strange superhero and you help me more than others, but..._no_. I cannot...no. I..."

Owl Woman shook her head sadly. Then, after gazing at him a moment, she said, "You look just like your father when he was your age."

"But!" Chad stammered. He let out nonsense syllables.

Jessica shook the superhero's hand. "Nice to meet you, _Owl Woman_. I-" She fought down another giggle. "Ahem. Maybe we can have a baby shower at the Owl Cave or something."

"It's called _The Roost_," Owl Woman corrected. "But yes, I'd like that. We have a lot of catching up to do. A lot of..._explaining._"

Jessica chuckled. "You want to set a date, or do you want to give me an invitation by Owl Batarang?"

Owl Woman frowned at Miss Terious. "I'll let you know. Too much has been said here already."

"Can I come to the baby shower too?" Miss Terious asked. "I love baby showers."

We just stared at her.

"_Drew,_" Jessica said. "Have you been in the real world any?"

I shrugged. "A little. Why?"

"Is my car still at the hotel?"

"Yeah," I said. "I even filled it up for you."

She smiled. "Thanks. Did you move anything around at all?"

I shrugged. "I put some of your stuff in my apartment. Let me know when you want it. I'll get you the keys."

I dug in my pocket. "Speaking of which..."

Instead of the keys, I pulled out a banana.

Frowning in dismay, I threw it aside and found myself pulling out all sorts of junk. A multicolored scarf, a sonic screwdriver, and then a mallet with a really really long handle.

"I put your keys in my pocket. They've _got_ to be in here somewhere!"

She sighed and shook her head. "God. Forget it. I'll go to my apartment and get a spare or something."

"I can't help it," I said. "I went through Hammerspace and I was trying to grab my bird, _which incidentally is over there making toothpicks_." I pointed that way. "I guess that somehow messed everything up."

I eyed her in puzzlement. "Wait. How did _you_ get here?"

"Chad drove me," she said.

That didn't make sense to me, but nothing in Cool World did.

I turned human for a moment, with human clothing.

Thankfully, the keys were in there. I handed them over.

She took them with a curt nod.

I stared at the kid in the carrier. "That baby isn't...animated."

Jessica nodded. "So?"

"So..." I said. "He's clearly...not one hundred percent human. How is that even possible?"

She gave me a smile. "_Magic._"

"Can you use..._your magic_ to fix _me_?"

"Sorry," she said, flashing animated. "You think if I could, I'd still be doing _this_?"

I didn't reply.

She must have noticed my facial expression, for then she said, "Don't get me wrong. Being a doodle is great. It's the turning back into a regular noid that pisses me off. If I knew how to do it, I would make myself completely animated by now."

"Have you tried asking a doodle to push you off a roof?" Hey, I was being helpful.

She gave me a solemn nod. "Yes. But I somehow think there's a better way."

"Well, I'm also working on a cure," I said. "When I find something, I'll let you know."

A blue man marched up to Owl Woman with a CD, a copy of _Bartholemew Cubbins_, and a wad of money.

"I believe you were looking for these?" Miss Terious said.

The superhero took them with a nod. "Our records still indicate you have not returned _Green Eggs and Ham_."

Miss Terious rolled her eyes. "I was opening a portal to the Shadow Realm and it fell into the Swamp of Lost Souls."

"There's a replacement fee for lost or stolen books."

The blue guy handed her about six dollars.

"There is also interest associated with the non-return. It has been gone from our shelves for a number of years..."

The faceless man dug in his blue pocket, handing her a wad of cash.

"Thank you for your patronage."

Owl Woman threw a canister of something on the floor, but all it did was make a little fog that barely obscured the ankles of her orange bird boots.

Looking embarrassed, she spun and marched out the back door.

"Why are you wearing a dress?" Jessica asked me.

I shrugged. "It seemed like the thing to do."

She chuckled.

I turned to face Miss Terious. "How do I get out of here?"

"Right this way," she said, leading us up the flight of steps to the office.

It was a control room of sorts, full of buttons, lights and switches, all apparently for monitoring and controlling poor little birds.

The place reminded me of what they used to have in the control board at hydroelectric dams, except there were some computers set aside for more nonstandard functions, like _selecting targets for atomic destruction_, and popping kettle corn with just the slightest hint of bacon flavoring.

For some strange reason, the popcorn device worried me more than the atomic warheads.

"What are you doing in this factory?" Jessica asked me.

"I was trying to save Extra. He's my bird. Actually, he used to be _your bird_, until, uh, well, they don't like your boyfriend."

"What's so bad about this place?" she asked. "The birds seem happy here."

"They _are_ happy," said Miss Terious, pointing to a pair making clocks outside the window. "See?"

And as she pointed, the birds turned and smiled, looking like the happiest fowl this side of _Snow White_.

I frowned. "I can't talk about it here."

"Then I'm sure you can discuss that matter at a later time," Miss Terious said. "Now, assuming that you do not wish to be confused with a _saboteur_, I will have my guards escort you out the front entrance."

"Bye, Drew," Jessica said, giving me a wink.

I didn't know what that wink meant, but I decided it best not to assume she was `open for business', so to speak.

I let the basketball goblins lead me through a door, into a warehouse full of...you can probably guess. Those poor overworked birds.

Past that room was an actual store, full of all kinds of wooden antiques, half of which I had seen in the factory.

the goons threw me to the floor, then, as they had slid aside a wall to get me into the shop, slid the wall back in place, a wall, which, from my vantage point, looked like nothing but a painting of a dozen kookoo clocks.

The store was tended by a kindly looking old Geppetto, and that weird half human sheepdog thing from _The Black Cauldron_.

I wouldn't be surprised if the two had mustache growing contests when they thought no one was looking.

At any rate, the two were not terribly surprised to see me exit in this fashion, so I doubted they would be of any help. I brushed myself off and marched out the door.

CC KnickKnocker, I discovered, was located across the street from a very familiar looking pizza place and Al's Vegetarian Poodle Clipping. I stepped out on the sidewalk, wary of crossing the street, which was seemingly empty at the moment.

A Cadillac had been parked in front of the store, but it was not the _Cat-Illac_, so I decided to leave it alone. This was Cool World, not _Grand Theft Auto_.

I wasn't sure where to go. I needed to get help. Some tough hero type who was sympathetic to my cause, and not a wimp like Owl Woman. But what kind of tough hero would care about little birdies in a factory?

I wandered up the sidewalk, staring in the dress shop, the deli...

The sidewalk stopped at an intersection. I ran like hell to cross it, nearly getting creamed by a delivery truck.

I glanced at the shop windows.

Acme.

A bookstore, one full of puns.

Two more Acme stores. For a company notorious for making shoddy goods, they sure had real estate.

I found the police station a block down.

The moment I stepped through the door, a dozen cartoon cops pulled their guns on me.

Someone said something, and they all put them down again, except for Cartoon Dirty Harry, who kept asking me if I felt lucky, and when I said no, he would pull out a different gun and ask me again. "How about now?"

I went up to the front desk and asked for Officer Harris.

The hippo sighed and said, "Just a moment."

"Harris," she said into the switchboard phone. "The Deebes guy wants to speak to you."

A second later, I was looking at Harris's spider pal. "Boss says to take you upstairs," he said, chomping his cigar back and forth in his mouth.

He led me into the elevator, the same one we had previously taken to the jail, except now we were going up.

"Anything more about the Spike of Power?" he asked me.

"No," I said. "Holli drained some juice off it, but left it where it was."

The spider sighed in relief. "Last time was _horrible_. I'd just assume not repeat that ever again."

"What's your name again?" I asked.

"Nails. Why?"

"Nothing," I said. "We just seem to keep running into each other, so I thought I'd ask."

The trenchcoat wearing orange cat from _Last Action Hero_ joined us again, but he seemed more interested in picking his boogers and eating them than talking to us.

The elevator opened, and I was led down a spartan looking hallway lined with offices. There were names on the door plaques, but the only one that I recognized was Commissioner Gordon, and he was out at the moment. I couldn't see through the frosted glass, so the plates didn't mean anything to me.

Harris's office was at the end of the hall. The room was rather up-to-date and sophisticated, with a 1930's twist, like a PI's office from a Raymond Chandler novel combined with the Batcave. The big antique desk had a computer and telecom systems on it, the gun locker had an electronic security system on it, and there was an elaborate surveillance system set up next to the rusty old file cabinet in the back corner. He had a couple leafy potted plants, which, being part of an animated world, could not be differentiated from plastic. I'm guessing one was supposed to be a philodendron, and the other a rubber plant, which might have been made of actual rubber.

I stared at the framed pictures on the desk, a black haired cartoon woman and two children. They owned a dog, sort of a simplified imitation of that sheepdog on Disney's _Little Mermaid_.

The officer was reclining in a posh swivel chair, smoking a cigarette. The old ceiling fan creaked noisily above our heads.

Noting my manner of dress, Harris said, "Great! You know, I was just thinking this place needed some spit and polish. You can start in the corner with the plant and the filing cabinet."

I frowned. "_Funny._"

"So," he said. "To what do I owe this great honor? Want official permission to sleep with someone else? The answer, of course, is _no_."

I frowned at him. "What do you know about CC Knickknocker?"

Harris pursed his lip, shrugged, and pointed to a clock. "Damn fine workmanship, if you ask me."

I told him about the birds. The animal cruelty. Everything. He just silently puffed his cigarette.

"_Deebes_. Would you listen to yourself? This whole place is _filled_ with animal cruelty. You can't even walk outside without seeing a cat getting blown up, or stabbed, or beaten with a club. If I go and arrest the people at Knickknockers, I'd have to arrest everyone in town!

"Take my advice, Deebes. Go back to your sister and find another birdie. You're out of your depth."

I half expected Mack Daddy to fly at Harris and pound some sense into him, but when he popped out of my dress, he only drooped like a beaten plug horse.

"Why did I even bother," I said. "You're still an asshole."

Harris tapped is cigarette into an ashtray and took another drag. "Ditto."


	42. Chapter 42: Flux Nursery

The animated newspaper article about the `incident' at Vlasic Baby Farms is hilarious. I'd tell you about that first, but it wouldn't make any sense to you, my reader, who is not currently inhabiting Cool World.

Okay, so this is what happened:

I saw how easy it was for people to slap together a doodle, combining their `genetics' (probably artistic styles or something rather than literal DNA), so I put together a few creations of my own.

You see, a koala was already finished with replicating my ovaries and DNA, so I tied him to a chair and duct taped his mouth as I..._replicated a little more_.

Pixar is shit anyway, so I dumped the entire digital vat, substituting mine in its place. The koala yelled something under his gag and squirmed like he was having a fit, so I shoved him in a closet.

It seemed that even koalas and superhero space aliens were Jewish, for the staff had been pared down to a skeleton crew. For this reason, nobody came to stop me.

Well, that and the fact I was wearing my bird disguise. The lab assistants pretty much ignored me when I was wearing it. I don't think any of them ever considered the possibility of espionage before.

Their computer system looked like something out of a spy movie, with a giant world map (probably for deliveries), closed circuit televisions that monitored every plot of the baby farm and every room in the building, and a set of complicated looking but simple to operate keyboard controls. A couple pokes, and I had everything figured out.

Baby Number One was a cinch. I just pulled out Chad's profile and stuck my genetics into it. A second later, the machine was spitting out seeds.

I saw where the usual seeds went, and wasn't too happy about sticking my baby in such a lowly demeaning location (at least, not my first one), so I actually yanked a potted office plant out of its dirt and stuck my seed in there, making sure to give it a thorough watering.

I thought about peeing on it, since that's what people do in Xanth novels, but I didn't see any ammonia sprayers outside, so I decided that wasn't what you did with those.

Oh, and I found an amazing electronic drawing pad that allows you to `ad-lib' some details on a new doodle baby, even details that won't develop until they become adult, or their permanent fixed age, whichever comes first.

I spent...maybe too much time on that one. There were _way_ too many possibilities for customization.

And then, well, I searched the system for any pending Pixar type digital characters and shuffled them forward into the `seed planting queue,' naturally replacing their electronic cells with Jessica Cells first.

Again, this was not difficult, for the majority of the operations resemble a child's toy computer from the 1980's (all flash and no substance), or one of those video games where you try to make food and special items (where supplies are the primary focus, rather than process elements like cooking time, temperature and skill). It seemed they basically ran on sorcery and wishful thinking. Maybe there _is_ something to that hackneyed phrase "Disney magic".

They never showed me the process of planting and seed distribution, but it did not require a degree in biology, chemistry, or agriculture. I'm also certain that machines like the Qizwori Auto Seeder would not be practical in reality, due to the tremendous potential for energy loss and disproportionately large kinetic output.

Here's what happens:

The lab machine produces a seed.

The seed is placed on a small conveyor belt with other seeds, at which point a computerized machine sorts them all out like pills in a pharmaceutical company.

So much for the creative process.

The pills go through small transparent tubes that feed into various regions of the `farm,' dropping into a machine that combines functions of a crop irrigator with a posthole digger and maybe a roto tiller, planting the seeds in open areas of soil, row by row.

The machine vaporizes predatory crows and other small animals that wish to attack the cabbage with a laser beam. It also `rotates' the crop, literally. You'd think planting some pickles in a few areas would enrich the soil for the next baby bumper crop, but it's a cartoon, so I guess they don't have to worry about nutrient depletion.

An actual crop irrigator waters them on a schedule, peppering them with various chemicals, growth agents, mutagens and steroids (I saw the control board for that, but I figured "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," so I left it alone).

After watering, the plants are then subjected to a variety of `rays', depending on what is scheduled for that region on that day. It appeared to be based on a rotation. One zone got concentrated moonlight, or sunlight from Funshine Bear, or cosmic rays, maybe even alien rays, by means of a sort of telescope that beamed concentrated space energy onto the patch.

As I watched the computer, I already saw a cluster of red dots appearing in a zone labeled `Dog Patch', and a dot matrix printer was barfing out stacks of papers telling _someone_ which plant needed to be retrieved where.

There were several zones I didn't especially care for. The Pixar zone, especially the one with talking inanimate objects (i.e. _Cars, Planes, Toy Stories_, and, about to hit theaters next month, _talking plumbing equipment_. I kid you not.

Through a bank of CCTV monitors, I could see every plot of land. It was daylight outside, which confused me, because all the clocks in the factory said midnight, and the building was mostly quiet and dark.

Each tract of land looked identical, a bunch of cabbages, where you couldn't even see what was behind the leaves.

It was Chad that discovered the red plastic boxes.

You know how, in all those action movies, the vehicles and atomic weapons always have some spot on the console where there's a little red plastic cover you flip back to reveal the seat ejector or the rocket launcher?

Vlasic had "E-Raze" buttons.

It was kind of like Battleship. You just picked A-12 and flipped the corresponding switch.

In case you're wondering, A-12 was actually the zone for _Cars_ and _Timmy the Toilet_.

Okay, so they were doodles, and they were digital, so I didn't feel quite so bad about wiping out a few dozen of them as I could have about real babies. In fact, I even giggled a little when I flipped the switch and saw all the lights in that zone go out.

A loud robotic voice said, "E-Razing Sector A-12," and a weird thrumming sound echoed all over the plant.

"Oops!"

A security camera showed the result: One of those spaceships from the 1953 version of _War of the Worlds _suddenly dropped out of the sky, blasting the patch to blackened stubble. It seems, in Cool World, they do everything with style.

The machine laid down sod like a roll of carpet, and I was prompted to assign a new designation for that region.

I could have gotten really clever and creative. I really, really wanted to. But I knew that the flying lamp ships would be back for my seed if I named it anything other than `Pixar - Inanimate.'

I only eliminated the digital stuff. It was harder to figure out where the cousins of _Spongebob, Dexter's Lab, _or_ Fairly Oddparents_ were located, so I left them alone.

Chad grabbed our potted baby, and we hurried out to the production floor.

We stopped there for a moment, because I had very carefully selected a bunch of baby doodles I wanted to destroy.

After searching around the premises for a few moments, I found a disposal chute, and we rolled the heavy cart up to it, dumping its contents by means of a metal slot you opened on the bottom.

I was peering down the chute, trying to see whether it contained an incinerator or a garbage disposal, when I heard Chad saying, "I think Nurse Cupcake is trying to get out."

"So?" I said. "She's probably been doing that for about ten to twenty minutes, maybe less, depending on whenever she got sick of peeing herself and giving herself spankings."

He gulped. "Does it trouble you that she has a saw?"

I frowned when I saw it slowly grinding through the Board of Directors.

So. Just run out the front door. Easy, right?"

Not quite. You see, when I had turned all the clocks ahead in the factory, logically it only affected the factory, and maybe buildings connected to the factory, like, say, _the synagogue_.

Someone somewhere along the line must have said, "You know, it's awfully sunny for twelve in the morning on a Saturday morning," and then, maybe some rabbit or another calls the head of Vlasic Synagogue:

"Hey, Ephraim! Let's go play golf. It's a lovely day!"

To which the other says, "What, are you nuts? It's _Shabbat_! Call me tomorrow."

And the other guy says, "Wait. You're calling _me_ nuts? It's Tuesday!"

So then the factory workers, red with embarrassment, hurry back to the plant.

Although the storks and birds seemed to be a push over, I didn't want to press my luck with a whole gaggle.

I searched back and forth for a way out.

"Is there any way we can use that pill conveyor to get outside?" I asked Chad.

"Not unless we turned really small," he said.

I glanced at the chute, then glanced again.

Then an honest to goodness cartoon light bulb popped up above my head. "Chad, remember how that guy in the office was saying how they couldn't have an oven, and not use the `A word'?"

He shrugged. "I...guess? Why."

"So..." I said. That means that this refuse chute cannot possibly be harmful."

"I...am not sure I like where this is going."

"Would it help if I gave you a _Scooby Snack?_" I teased.

He seemed unimpressed. "No?"

"How about we go back to your place and blow out the windows again?"

That seemed to work, for a second later, he was dropping the potted baby down the chute and jumping down after it.

Okay. My idea, so I had to do it too.

It was a little claustrophobic, but I hopped in, and...

It was like a slide. A big chrome tube that zipped around in a spiral. It even had little windows here and there where you could look outside at a wall of rocks.

And then, all of a sudden, we hit the end, and we're falling down a mine shaft. But it's a _weird_ mine shaft.

Remember that scene from _Alice in Wonderland_ where she falls down the rabbit hole? This was kind of similar.

My rate of descent slowed like I were at the exact center of the earth, and I was seeing shelves and cabinets along the limestone and granite walls.

I always thought that Alice should have ransacked those cabinets, tried to open more and see what was in there.

And so I did what I first contemplated while smoking a joint on the Teacup Ride at Disneyland.

Mostly, I saw a bunch of dishes. I did not find marmalade, but I never liked the taste of that junk anyway.

I wasn't sure who made use of the place, but the cabinets all faced me, so I guessed it couldn't be Hammerspace.

The books all had uninteresting titles, like _The History of Silt_ and _The Real America_ by Rush Limbaugh, and when I opened them, the pages were blank.

Being an artist, I kept one for a sketchbook (_Turbotax for Dummies)_, stuffing it into my bikini top, which had become rather roomy ever since I turned eighty percent animated.

Looking up, I could see nothing but inky darkness. It didn't look like anyone could just fly out the top and join the Victorian petticoat crowd for tea.

On the whole, the place wasn't nearly as thrilling as I expected. I found one of those tall red toolbox things men keep in their garages, and an underwear drawer containing whitey tighties, condoms, and a copy of _Rough Rodent Magazine_ (the females were all slender and wasp waisted. How rough is _that_?) I did, however, find a gun, so I pocketed (or rather, _bikinied_) that.

There was a chemistry set, more blank books, and a cabinet full of little porcelain figures. Nothing really worth my time. Maybe Alice was right, after all.

Below me I saw Chad, clutching the potted baby. I folded my arms and legs together, diving lower, beside him.

"See?" I said. "It's not so bad."

He tried to kiss me, but I dove below.

The cabinets and shelves disappeared after a few feet. A second later, we were splashing into an underground sea.

The water was paint, so it wasn't as cold as I expected. We washed up on a gravelly shore in a cavern scattered with all the babies we'd dumped. All still very much alive.

So _that_ was a pointless exercise.

At least our baby was okay. The pot still seemed to contain soil. I just hoped it didn't matter if you over watered.

As we were staring at our surroundings, trying to figure out how to return to the surface, I see a figure in an exoskeleton bikini marching out of a corridor framed by giant stalagmites. She smiled when she approached.

"Miss Terious," I said.

She nodded. "I've been watching your progress. Very resourceful. Very clever."

She gave my boyfriend a smile. "_Chad..._"

Looking a bit embarrassed, he said, "Hi."

She stared at the babies I'd brought down. "Oh, and look at all these Grade A specimens! These should make terrific slaves."

"I completely agree," I said. "I think it would make them more..._interesting_. As they were, I'm pretty sure they would have made for lousy television."

I frowned. "You don't kill or destroy all these babies that get dropped down here, do you?"

She shook her head. "Why waste such an amazing labor force?"

"Why indeed," I said. "I'm definitely impressed."

Miss Terious rubbed her chin. "You know, I've been looking for an intern for a department that just opened up. I think a woman with your skills would be exactly what my company needs."

I giggled. "You want me to work for you?"

She stared at me. "That's funny. I've never heard that phrased without a stress on either the `me' or the `you.'"

Grinning, I said, "That's...because..._I'm kinda interested._"

"In that case," she said. "Come with me. We have much to discuss."

I followed the strange lady through a massive underground fortress that reminded me of something from a James Bond movie, except it was staffed by cool cartoon characters that nobody in the studios wanted to show on film. Lots of freakish mutants, midgets, goblins and erotic animal characters of both sexes.

Most of them appeared to be assembling weapons, missiles, biological agents, that sort of thing...

"I run an international business, with aims at expansion," Miss Terious said.

Amused, I said, "So you're an evil mastermind."

She scowled at me. "_If you're going to be rude_, I can escort you out right now."

"No, no," I said with a laugh. "It's cool. I've always been fascinated by villains."

She looked at me like I were insane. "You're actually serious."

I shrugged.

Suddenly, a plate of chitinous armor or whatever dropped over her eyes, and she screamed, "I'm not a villain! I'm the benevolent queen of the Zecbottu empire!"

I had to fight down a laugh, covering my mouth.

"Sorry," I said with a smile. "You're right. It was presumptuous of me. Still, if you were a villain (_which you are obviously not_), I would still think you're pretty cool."

Miss Terious raised her face plate. "You really think so?"

"You don't see me sabotaging your stuff, do you?"

She smirked. "I just thought that was because you didn't want to become shark food."

"No, no," I protested. "To actually have enough money to own and maintain nuclear warheads, and actually have an agenda other than expanding the reach of Islam..."

Judging by the expression on her face, she apparently didn't know what I was talking about.

Not wanting to spoil a good thing, I just said, "It's a sexist thing they do in certain Arabian countries, like belly dancing or trading a woman for a herd of sheep."

This made her look troubled, but she didn't say anything in reply to this. Instead, she glanced at the potted baby in my boyfriend's hands. "What's that you've got there?"

"Our baby," I said.

She frowned. "Oh. That's right. I saw that with my spy drones."

I chuckled. "So you've been spying on me."

"You have to entertain yourself _somehow_," she said.

I briefly wondered if she'd been spying on me and Chad in the bedroom, but I liked this lady, so I didn't want to step on her toes again.

Miss Terious smirked at my boyfriend. "I'm pleased to see that you've finally found someone. I was starting to wonder about you."

She reached for the pot. "May I?"

I and Chad eyed her nervously.

"Why?" I asked, tensing up.

"I have incubators and special machinery. I can get this child to sprout a lot quicker than it would up top."

Chad and I glanced at each other, both of us a little uncertain.

Should I let a shifty villainess meddle with my baby?

But then again, did I really want _storks_ to meddle with it? Especially now that I've tampered with everything in the facility?

"Are you going to make him grow another head?" I asked. "Or shoot laser beams from his eyes?"

Miss Terious looked confused. "Did you..._want me to?_"

I shook my head. "Not really. What about making my baby into a brainless musclebound henchman? Was that on the agenda?"

"Again," she said. "Are you _asking_ me to?"

"No," I said.

"Please relax, Jessica," she said. "I only wish to help your baby."

For a moment, I wondered how she got my name, but then I remembered we'd been introduced when I first visited Chad's apartment.

I kept looking at my boyfriend, but he didn't say anything.

"If you want to be my intern," Miss Terious said. "You're going to have to take some risks, and you're definitely going to have to trust me."

I nodded to Chad, and he handed the woman our `baby plant'.

She pushed a button on the wall, and her butler, clad in a helmet-less _Star Wars_ stormtrooper outfit, marched out of one of the rooms.

"Mmyes?"

Miss Terious handed the pot to him. "Place this in the Flux Nursery. Lowest setting."

"Yes, ma'am."

Of course we had to see what he was doing.

We were led down a long angular corridor with windows and doors leading to various operations, such as a special school that taught young cartoon characters how to be henchmen and hench women, how to fight ineffectively, how to add, subtract and read instructions on death weapons, chemistry and genetics. For a moment, I put serious thought into enrolling my baby in the place, once he or she were full grown.

Past this school, and a lab for prototype deeply flawed villain weapons, I came to the nursery.

It was like a greenhouse, except, of course, it was in a cave, so they had to use electric lighting. The entire area was one big cabbage patch.

"Wow," I said, staring at all the plants. "Let me guess. You guys make your own genetics, make seeds, and plant them like they do up top."

Miss Terious shook her head.

"Um, you have a guy on the inside that messes with the genetics and sneaks the seeds down."

"Actually," she said. "We have a contract with them. If they have a suspicious or villainous looking seed, it goes straight down here."

"What!" I cried. "That's crazy!"

"Why. Villains have sex, too. Imagine them seeing a brightly colored stork delivering their baby. They'd probably shoot it out of the sky!"

That revelation astounded me. "So...you're like the opposite of a stork?"

She shrugged. "My ambitions are a bit loftier than that. The baby delivering business just pays for the overhead."

The pieces were starting to fit together.

"Wait," I said. "Are you...trying to dump your baby business on me so you can go conquer the world?"

She smiled. "It's a little more complicated than that, but I have to admit it _is_ part of your job description as an intern. We have to keep the lights and other utilities on somehow..."

I rolled my eyes, but decided not to argue, since I figured my intelligence alone would be enough to move me up the ranks. There were several things I'd seen so far that needed to be improved to thwart superheroes, innovations that would likely secure my place as a valuable antihero. Plus, she said she had some stuff to impress Holli.

"Fine," I said. "I guess you got to start out somewhere, huh?"

"Exactly."

"I thought you wanted to be Holli Would!" Chad said.

I replied, "Well, this is cool too. Plus I can always put this on my resume when I finally have a talk with her."

"I have a few things of my own that might help you on that end," Miss Terious said. "Though I hope you will still consider remaining on staff, once we have you properly trained. Training _is_ expensive, you know."

She led me down a row of cabbages. "You can imagine, with me stuck in my binding contract, how delighted I was to see you mucking up the Vlasic machinery. I personally am not allowed up there. Any sabotage to the process, and they would void my contract. With you, I have an airtight alibi. I did not know you intended to take over the factory, so I have plausible deniability."

"Uh, no problem," I said.

We followed Sleez to a set of cylindrical machines at the rear of the greenhouse. The things almost looked like giant blenders.

I watched with discomfort as the butler opened one, carelessly dumping my seed and its dirt into a bucket on the bottom of the machine. He closed the cylinder tightly, turning a dial.

What followed was something like a washing machine cycle, where it rained, a plant light came on, and various other things bombarded the seed, including classical music.

As I watched this, I suddenly noticed that the other machines were empty. I brought this to Miss Terious's attention.

"Oh?" she said. "Well, I haven't had much of a reason, as of late, to rapidly assemble an army. You know, most individuals, such as myself, are in no rush to have a child, so the gradual method is just as good. Some argue that it's actually better for them to grow the old fashioned way, but honestly, it's a matter of taste rather than actual science."

"Yeah," I muttered. "I really don't think science has much to do with storks and cabbage patches."

The seed didn't do anything for about ten minutes.

"The process is fast," Miss Terious said. "But not that fast. General turnaround is about six hours."

"Kind of like a Thanksgiving turkey," I said.

She nodded. "While we wait on that, I'd like to show you something."

She led me past a torture chamber, and into a large white room with soundproofed walls, containing nothing but a giant black orb on a pedestal.

The orb had five holes all around, and in the center I saw a glowing spike, a spike that made the object thrum and make strange noises.

"Wow," I said. "What's that?"

"It's called _The Ultraspike_. Tell me, Jessica. How much do you know about the Spikes of Power?"

"A lot," I said.

"Excellent! As you can see, the Ultraspike contains only one Spike of Power. One of your jobs, as an intern, will be to retrieve the other five Spikes."

"Um," I stammered. "What will it do when I get them all together?"

"Do you remember that little incident when that one little Spike was removed from its place last time?"

I frowned. "Did that have something to do with all of Las Vegas turning animated?"

Miss Terious laughed. "So that's what it did in your world. _How very interesting_."

"What did it do to yours?"

"Oh, nothing much," she said with a dismissive wave. "A lot of doodles escaped into your world, including ghosts and beings from the ethereal plane, energy powers intensified, new powers were created out of the instability of the two realities, doodles began to develop complicated sensations and feelings...it was really too bad that it didn't last longer. I wanted to study it further."

"But by doing this," I said. "I could turn the whole world into a big cartoon."

"Would that be so bad?" she asked.

I didn't even think about it. I just blurted, "Hell no. I think it would be an improvement."


	43. Chapter 43: Wild Oats

Miss Terious seemed to be pleased with my response. "Would you like some lunch?" she asked. "Dinner, perhaps? I'm not sure what time it was where you came from, but I don't believe you've eaten anything since the Savoy."

I frowned at her. "Not to sound ungrateful, but have you been spying on _everything_ I've done since I met Chad?"

She chuckled. "Oh honey. You have no idea how long I've been waiting to see Chad..._get a life_. Most hilarious thing I've ever seen, though I _was_ kind of hoping to see him getting busy with a man..." The woman shrugged. "Nothing against you personally, but I just _had_ to record it."

"Wow," I said, staring at her. "That's...kind of _creepy._"

Miss Terious smiled. "In a scary villainess sort of way?"

"Um, no," I replied. "Just creepy creepy."

The smile dropped from her face. An awkward silence passed between us.

At last, Miss Terious touched a panel on the wall, summoning Sleez.

The man appeared next to us, dressed like a Mexican bandit from a spaghetti western, with a big sombrero, mustache and a poncho. "Mmmyes?" And then, as an afterthought, "Si?"

"Get Miss..._Buckthorn_ something to eat."

She led me into a dining room with a long table, its rock walls decorated with tall framed portraits of aliens in tuxedos and dresses.

I was seated at the far end, Miss Terious at the head, all awkward and ridiculous like that scene from the Michael Keaton _Batman_ film.

We stared at each other, waiting for the food to arrive.

Miss Terious was seated _in_ a flat piece of cardboard cut and painted to look like a chair. I guessed animated people can sit on two dimensional surfaces or something.

In fact, _I myself_ happened to be sitting in such a cardboard chair. I had done it unthinkingly, like it were something I had always done...except I fell to the floor any time I turned real.

"So..." I said, pointing to a picture of a faceless thing in green silk.

"That's mother," she said with a smile. Then she pointed to a skinny pale skinned guy next to it. "And that's father."

I grinned. "They must be very proud."

Miss Terious nodded. "They still have the bones from my first kill."

She pointed out her other relations.

I expected the names to be weird, foreign sounding names, but they were all rather ordinary, like "Uncle Zeke" and "Aunt Henrietta."

She told me how her parents met, the war between the Federated Worlds and Zorbatron, and how Mr. Schneider broke his leg, and the alien nursed him back to health, the two, of course, falling in love.

"So," I said. "You're married."

Miss Terious shook her head. "No. I take my name from my mother's side of the family."

"So what's your first name?" I said.

She answered, "I don't have one."

I chuckled through my nose. "So how do you Teriouses tell each other apart?"

"By scent."

I giggled. "I see."

"I took my name from mother in a fight to the death."

I snorted, trying to look serious. "You just said they still have the bones from your first kill."

Miss Terious nodded. "They do."

I guessed that she meant _they_ were her fist kill, but that still didn't quite make sense.

At any rate, she didn't seem too sad about it, so I said, "So what do I call you?"

"Miss Terious," she said.

I rolled my eyes. "What do _your friends_ call you?"

She sighed. "I don't have any friends."

"Actually," I said. "You have at least one." And then I thought a moment. "What about Mr. Sleezington? Isn't he a friend?"

"He's my butler. I _pay_ him."

For the second, or maybe third time, I fell on the floor, nonchalantly brushing myself off as I re-seated myself.

"Okay..." I said. "What about Chad? _He_ hangs out with you, right?"

Miss Terious sighed. "We're not exactly close. He tends to avoid me. I guess I don't know how to be a friend."

"We can work on that," I paused. "I know! How about I call you `_Misty_'?"

"No!" she said in a cold tone. But then she smirked. "Okay."

I asked Misty about her other relatives, but she only responded with, "See _Star Avenger #195_ \- ed," or "_Weird Tales from the Shadow Dimension_ #10," or "See _Evil of Terious_ Issue #8," leaving a lengthy period of silence afterwards, like I could use the time to just magically jump into a comic book store and pull down an issue. At one point, I even asked her, "Why can't you just _tell me_ what happened to Uncle Ted in _Power of Galactus #13_?" but she only said no.

As a joke, I changed the number on one of her references, asking her, "What about _Shades of Terious #17_?"

She reddened. "That's the one where I lost my virginity. Do you really want to hear about _that_?"

"Not really," I chuckled.

I fell on my butt again.

Sleezington, dressed like the guy from _Logan's Run_, or maybe Luke Skywalker (kind of a black tunic looking thing with a belt), and a pair of those hairy toothy aliens from the movie _Critters_ came marching in with silver trays full of food. The waddling Crites looked very cute animated with their little suits and bow ties.

The meal looked like something they show in all those _Garfield_ comics. A big leg of ham, grapes, lasagne, a tall Dagwood style sandwich, chicken...

Honestly, it all tasted pretty plain, like tofu or paper, but I pretended like it were other tastier things, and it made it somewhat better.

One thing I like about being animated. You can eat a ton without ever getting fat.

If you like trying to sit in flat cardboard chairs.

I checked on the baby again. It had developed into sort of a potato with collard greens growing out of it. Still not quite `done', and definitely not quite a baby.

"You must be tired," Misty said. "We have sleeping quarters here. Would you like to see them?"

"That...depends," I said. "Is someone going to sneak in and do weird experiments on us while we're sleeping?"

She frowned. "No?"

"What about...someone sneaking into our rooms to do sexual things?"

"Would that be a bad thing?" she asked, like she were considering it.

"Um, yeah!" I stammered. "Kinda."

She twisted her lip. "So that's why no one ever stays here!"

This got me laughing again. "I was guessing you were the Dr. Frankenfurter type."

"What?" she, of course, had never seen _Rocky Horror Picture Show_.

"Never mind," I said.

The `guest bedroom' was not exactly what I expected. It was just a little room with a couch, a dresser, and a row of vertical tubes. Guests slept standing up in those things. I guess the bed had machinery that suspended gravity inside the tube so you didn't do so much stand as you just floated in the air, like one of those scifi comics about astronauts from the future.

"Do people only sleep in those tubes?" Chad asked Misty as I examined the framed alien landscapes decorating the room.

"Yes," our host said. "Or the couch if my guests are having a fight."

"And what if they wish to have intercourse?"

She just smiled and looked up.

I glanced that way and laughed.

Chad, on the other hand, looked embarrassed. "Forgive me. You are right. To do such a thing in another person's house is impolite."

Misty opened her mouth to say something, but I just tugged his arm and pointed at the ceiling.

"Oh!" he said when he saw it.

Apparently her guests like to make love up there. A fancy queen bed had been bolted to a leveled cavern roof. I even saw dressers, a closet, and a stalactite nightstand, though I don't see how anyone could set their wallet or glasses on it without everything falling to the floor.

"You guys think of everything," I said. But then I looked at her in puzzlement. "I thought you said you had no friends."

Misty sighed and stared at the floor. "It doesn't mean I don't try."

She sniffed a little, and for a moment, I thought she would get all teary eyed about it. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I _am_ a villain, and that's why I have no friends."

"Oh, _I don't know_," I said, patting her on the shoulder. "I'm sure you mean well."

She lifted her gaze. "You really think so?"

I gave her a shrug. "I do. And there's something else I'm wondering. Do you pay Mr. Sleezington to let you whip him, and other stuff?"

"Never!" she said. "He likes it. In fact, one time, I couldn't afford to pay him anything because we were going through a budget crisis, and..."

She slapped her hand over her mouth. "He loves me! He actually-"

The butler appeared behind her, dressed as Zorro. Widebrim hat, tights, ridiculous eye mask. "Mmmyes!" he cried.

At this point, the evil alien queen with a nuclear weapons facility decides to be completely spontaneous, grabbing her butler by the neck and kissing him passionately. She got so carried away that her visor dropped down over her eyes.

"You're a great couple," I said.

Sleez, who had been kissing at the time, pulled away from the activity to break character by saying, "Thank you."

A pair of bug wings burst from Misty's back. She grabbed the butler around the waist, and the two rose up in the air, to the queen bed.

Chad stared at Misty as she pulled off the butler's clothes.

"We should go," I told him.

Chad was still watching, but he looked a little disgusted. "What's that coming out between her legs?"

I preferred not to look. "I don't know. Maybe you should stick to what's between mine."

He stubbornly continued to watch, his face growing even more disgusted. "_That_ should not go in _there_!"

I tugged on his arm. "C'mon. Let's go back to your place. We'll put things wherever you want."

Then I glanced at the ceiling.

I wished I hadn't.

I...

No. Don't ask. I don't want to ever think about what I saw again.

"I'm leaving!" I called. "I'll be back in six hours!"

"but how do you know how to get out of here?" Chad asked.

"I don't," I said. "But we can find a couch somewhere..."

"Push the call button on the wall!" Misty cried, half moaning as she said it. "A minion will show you out!"

"Mmyes!" Sleez added. Or maybe he was just _enjoying himself_.

I pushed the button, and something that looked like a one eyed Twinkie the kid appeared in front of me.

A yellow banana-like thing with a cowboy hat and a gun belt. _Not digital_.

"_Minion_," I muttered.

"How may I help you?" it asked.

Okay, so maybe _some things_ the storks dumped down here weren't really that good.

Twinkie the Kid led us to a golf cart, which we rode for a mile or so, stopping at an elevator. An elevator with no up or down button, just a security panel.

The moment we got out, Twinkie pushed the gas pedal, speeding off down the tunnel, leaving me to stare at the keypad in frustration.

"Great. Now what."

Chad casually typed in a code, and the doors opened.

I gawked at him. "Why do you know how to do that?"

He shrugged. "Sometimes I help out. It is a condition on my lease agreement."

The elevator, of course, led to Chad's apartment. How else would Misty have been able to hang out there so often?

You can probably figure out what happened next. I kinda thought he deserved it, and, well, (ahem). So we went at it again.

Not as dramatic as before. Don't get me wrong, it was great as the first time, but we didn't blow the windows out or anything.

In fact, we didn't even change that much. I was still mostly animated, but flickering human at odd times, and Chad was still flickering back and forth from real to a doodle, though he seemed to trend towards real. We had tried a different position, but I'm not really sure that had anything to do with it.

Oh well. At least we enjoyed it.

We curled up in each other's arms, and went to sleep. This time there was no one knocking on our window, so we actually got some rest.

Okay. So, about the newspaper.

The next morning at breakfast, Chad showed me the article.

The headline read: "Factory Exec In Deep Doo Doo."

Like any good cartoon paper, the articles had no text entries other than a headline, because the story is always told in a black and white movie, complete with sound.

A few seconds after we disappeared down the baby chute, Nurse Cupcake finished sawing through the Board of Directors, bursting out on the production floor clad only in a bra and a diaper.

It just so happened that everyone in the entire factory chose that moment to come marching through the entrance, half of them wearing suits and yarmulkes from their incorrectly scheduled Shabbat.

Cupcake took one look at her audience and screamed, covering her crotch.

She pooped herself, then, with a blush and an embarrassed giggle, said, "That _does_ feel kind of good!"

Being a bird that wears many hats, she quickly zoomed back into the diaper room, returning in her normal nurse attire.

"Ahem."

But she was still making squishing sounds as she walked.

She found the koala stuck in the closet, but nobody seemed to notice that the digital vat looked different, _or_ that someone had tossed out their so-called `Grade A's'.

Once the piece, or rather pieces of wood were back in their shattered case, a board meeting was held in review of Cupcake's employment. Of course they were "divided" on the issue, as they probably would be about everything until things got fixed.

The clocks were reset, and factory workers resumed their duties.

Well, except for the iguana. His name was written on the inside of the mask I'd stolen, and when they found it, they promptly fired him.

I would have felt bad about it, but I guess the reason why the guy had been disguised to begin with was due to him being fired a year ago and being told not to come back.

They heightened their security, hiring several `Pinkerton guards', which just so happened to be realistically shaded zebra striped great Danes in the style of artist and author Stephen Kellogg. A couple of them walked upright and wore uniforms, but the rest were regular dogs. Dogs with problems following directions.

One of the storks told a guard to sit, and it ripped them to pieces. The same dog would lay down and roll over if you told it to attack.

Other than that, the factory was back to normal.

Well, until they started seeing half human babies rolling down the sorting line that night.

The moment Nurse Cupcake saw them, she let out a shriek. And then, as she noticed everybody staring at her, she nervously stammered it was nothing.

But then she took out a bullhorn and told everyone to assemble in the meeting room down the hall.

"What's this about?" a puffin asked her.

"Nothing," she answered. "I just saw a tornado watch on the news."

That explanation, I guess, was compelling enough, for the puffin and a group of others hurried out.

She waited for the last one bird, mouse or whatever to file out, whistling _Stars and Stripes Forever_, impatiently tapping her foot.

Once she had the room empty, Cupcake rushed to a panel along the wall, near the baby unwrapping station, typing in a complicated security code, unlocking a nearby instrument box with a key.

It looked a lot like one of those special safe boxes the president always has in all those movies about a nuclear war with Russia. In fact, she had to dive behind a machine and change clothing to become a vice president with a second key.

For a moment, I thought I was watching a weird version of _Doctor Strangelove_.

A panel slid open, revealing a shiny button, which I guessed, from the monochrome, was red and candy-like.

The moment her finger pressed the button in, a set of Chipper Shredders rose out of the floor, the cabbage line conveyor tracks shifting from its usual sorting station to the maw of the toothy machines.

The moment this happened, I saw warning lights coming on all over the plant, and large light up signs flashed the word "ABORT".

Dozens of my _babies, my seed_, went rolling off the sorting line, and into the jaws of death, blood spraying from the rapidly spinning blades.

The bird's face and body became scary and under-lit like _Scooby Doo's_ animated Vincent Price as she broke into maniacal laughter.

At this precise moment, the employees came filing back into the assembly floor, and Mr. Vlasic himself was staring at her with his jaw hanging open.

The first thing out of the stork's mouth was the traditional "Noooo" with his voice slowed down to sound like a vinyl record at 20 RPM.

Cupcake's eyes got really big, and I could hear the sound of her filling her diaper again.

I had been drinking orange juice as I _watched_ this paper. A couple times, I got the giggles so bad that it sprayed out my nose.

I was pissed about the babies, though. I'd worked very hard to contribute my genetics to the system, just to have a self important diaper wearing bird shredding my babies to bloody bits. I really hoped they'd fire her.

Of course, the `article' didn't tell me about that part. I could only stew about it until the next edition came out.

"What's the matter?" said Chad.

I pointed to the article. "_This._ She aborted our babies!"

"Actually," he said. "They are _your_ babies...and whoever you crossed them with. I do not judge you for this, for I helped, but you have essentially slept with everyone in Cool World. Anonymously."

He must have noticed my offended facial expression, for he then added, "But I am still sorry to lose my _adopted children_."

He checked his watch. "Speaking of which, it has been more than six hours. Let us check the baby."

It seemed Misty still spied on us, for the moment the elevator opened at the correct basement floor, Sleez and Twinkie the Kid were already waiting for us in the golf cart.

A short ride later, and we were in the greenhouse, gazing through the glass tube of the Flux Nursery at a lovely little head of cabbage.

The greenhouse had a smaller greenhouse near the back, where I presumed highly specialized gardening tasks were performed with smaller, feebler plants.

Hearing a noise, I saw Misty stepping out of this structure, dressed in a chitinous looking nurse's uniform.

It was like she sewed it out of a bunch of beetles and crickets and cockroaches, then fashioned the little hat out of cicacas. Kinda gross, but cute in a weird sort of way.

The woman smiled, opening the machine. "This will be the sixth one I've unwrapped."

I squinted at her, confused. "What?"

"I designed two of those LTA machines to spray out ketchup and drop the babies down a chute when the Abort procedure happens."

"I thought I saw more than two machines," I said. "What about those?"

Misty just frowned, peeling leaves off the cabbage.

She ate the leaves, shredding them like a grasshopper. A few moments later, and I was looking at the most adorable little..._thing_.

Part human, part animated kangaroo. Yup. It was our kid.

It was weird to see a cartoon character made of human skin, but he wasn't ugly.

Yeah. It's a boy. _I checked_.

"Oh my gosh!" I squealed, snatching him out of her hands, pressing him to my chest. "Aren't you just adorable?"

His eyes were a little large, but my boyfriend is a doodle. It comes with the territory.

As I was playing with his floppy ears and trying to come up with a name, Misty said, "Would you like to see the others?"

And so I followed her into the miniature greenhouse.

I guess I got my just desserts for `sowing my wild oats,' so to speak.

I had a literal `bat girl', a real baby `cat woman', a reptile boy, a bird boy, and a girl who was literally a bitch.

Squealing, I showed my baby to his half brothers and half sisters.

"They are very beautiful," said Misty.

"Yeah," I sighed. "I guess this means I have to settle down and raise them all, doesn't it?"

She shrugged. "Not necessarily. You could put them up for adoption if you wish. I know some individuals who would love a good mutant..."

I tapped my chin. "Well..."

But then I said, "What about your school? I think that would be perfect!"

For a moment, Misty looked horrified, but then she seemed to warm to the idea. ""If you really don't mind..."

I nodded, so she told Mr. Sleezington to take the babies to her daycare center.

The butler put them in a wheelbarrow, carting them off.

"Have you heard of CC Knickknocker?" Misty asked me.

I chuckled. "What, is that a strip club?"

I pretended to pole dance for a moment, showing her I was ready for anything.

"No no no," she said. "It's one of my side businesses. They make kookoo clocks and door frames. You'll love it."

I sighed in relief. "Even better!"

She took a baby carrier off the wall, sticking.._.I was still trying to decide on a name_...into it.

I turned the baby around, doing my impression of that mutant guy from _Total Recall_. "_Quaid!"_

No one got the joke, so I made Chad wear the baby harness and we took the golf cart down a corridor to a different elevator, this one opening inside a massive grandfather clock with a fake pendulum.

When I stepped out the glass door, I discovered I was standing in front of a sort of antique shop, full of wooden _knicknacks_, for lack of a better word.

We walked in, met the owner, who, ironically enough, happened to be Geppetto. I guess he must have slept outside of the species himself, for the guy assisting him kinda looked like a sheepdog, but had an almost uncanny resemblance to himself, and I'm not just talking about the mustaches.

It was a great store. The clocks and stuff looked beautiful.

I whistled. "Nice place!"

Misty beamed brightly as she lead me to the back wall, obviously nothing more than a giant painting of clocks on a wall.

She turned the hands on one of the painted clocks to 12:30, and the wall slid aside to reveal a room full of computers and machine controls.

"This is where I oversee operations on our craft shop, as well as the nuclear launch facility."

I glanced at the humming machinery. "I believe it."

And then I pointed at the one in the corner. "What's this?"

"It makes popcorn," she said. "_Evil popcorn._"

I laughed, and she laughed too.

But then she stopped laughing and said, "I'm serious. The popcorn is evil."

I gave her a nod, not doubting it for a minute.

She opened a door at the end of the room, and all of a sudden I see a bunch of birds performing a musical number as they carved things out of wood with their beaks. Timon and Pumbaa were leading the song.

Pretty catchy. I was snapping my fingers as they fluttered around, merrily chiseling clocks and picture frames and staircase railings.

I thought I recognized a few of the birdies from that time I hit my head in the hotel, but they all kind of look alike, so I wasn't sure. I wouldn't have been surprised if a couple got bored of floating in my shake at the malt shop and hopped over here to make table legs.

"They are such loyal workers," Misty said. "Just give them the right pellets and they do whatever you ask."

"That's neat," I said. "Were you going to have me manage this place too?"

"I was considering it," she said. "We'll see. How about I show you the Coo Coo Cola factory next door?"

I shrugged. "All right."

That's when I heard screaming.

Whirling around, I caught sight of _Drew_.

Somehow, he'd gotten himself chained to a log about to be sawn in half. He had a weird gray birdie with him, and a lady in an owl costume.

I never thought he'd jump through the doorway and join me here, let alone clown around in a cartoon wood factory. I guess he found his inner child or something. Or maybe his feminine side, as he _was_ wearing a dress.

At first I thought it was a joke, but I guess he was trying to sabotage the company or something.

He probably deserved what he got, but I decided to be nice and stop the blade. After all, I still found him kind of cute.

It's a good thing I saved them. Drew's costume friend was none other than Owl Woman, and get this, _she's Chad's mother_!

I didn't say this out loud, since it would be bad form for a comic character, but I still think Chad figured it out. A lame superhero that drops by on your birthday to give you presents and watches you to see if you're safe, but fails at, I don't know, _stopping bank robberies..._just might be your mom.

As for Drew..._wow_.

I really don't want to believe his story about sleeping with his sister, but why would you make up something like that? And his body does that flickering thing like mine does...

Now that I think about it, I guess it kind of makes sense. I mean, if Deebes Senior slept with a cartoon...

Come to think of it, that explains a _lot_ about what happened the day Jack asked to borrow mom's car.

If I knew Drew was _that_ desperate, I would have finished what we started at the hotel. Maybe. Of course, it's too late now.

Still, very sad and pathetic.

Owl Woman was obsessed about library materials. Not really sure why, except maybe that's how they maintained stock in Cool World. Once she had her overdue materials, she was gone.

But not before we had agreed to have a baby shower.

Drew was trying to convince me that Misty was practicing animal cruelty or something, but I didn't see it. Plus, they were just your generic _Cinderella_ birdies, so it really didn't bother me if they got tortured a little.

I could tell he was outstaying his welcome, so I was a little relieved when Misty sent him away to...go screw his sister, or whatever he was doing.

"Tell your sister I said hi!" I called, but I don't think he heard me.

I saw a goblin thing squish one of the birdies like a grape, but I just turned away and whistled, pretending I didn't see it.

Misty chuckled. "I like the way you think."

"So..." I prompted. "The soda factory?"

She paused a moment. "Actually...there's someone I want to introduce you to..."

And then she leads me to a mirror covered in a sheet.

"Um...okay," I said. "Are we going to find out who's the fairest?"

"Not quite," she said, ripping the sheet down.

It looked like a regular mirror. Nothing extraordinary, except it reflect the factory instead of showing bands of blue and white like a normal cartoon mirror.

"Hello," Misty said to it. "Hello?"

Nothing happened.

She knocked on it, shouting, "Hello!"

No response.

Misty sighed. "He's toying with me. He knows I hate doing this..."

And then she starts singing _Escalator of Life_ by Robert Hazard.

That's when I see him.

He looks like Mr. Spacely from _The_ _Jetsons_, except he's fatter and more bald. With a floating chair.

The hair above his ears looked like a pair of brown caterpillars on a bald expanse, the caterpillar in the center of his head barely staying on, his eyebrows cut to semi-permanently reflect that `evil' look.

The guy responsible for turning Kidd Vid into a cartoon, pulling him and all his friends into Cool World.

"Oh my God!" I laughed. "It's Master Blaster!"


	44. Chapter 44: Existential

"Even _I'm_ not that crazy," Harris said, seemingly unprovoked.

"Excuse me?" I said, baffled.

The officer blew a smoke ring. "_That_ was the smartest thing your father ever said to me. I asked him if he drew _me_, like he claimed to draw everything in Cool World, and he said..."

He smoked, and puffed out a Felix the Cat shaped cloud. "I initially got angry at him, because I took it at face value, but, probably unknown to him, he was actually hinting at a deeper truth..."

I blinked at him several times, not believing what I was hearing. "So now dad's your guru?"

He suddenly broke into a fit, whether it was coughing or laughing I wasn't sure.

"Good God no," he said, catching his breath. "But even a bad oyster occasionally barfs out a pearl."

He inhaled deeper. "Your dad wasn't just saying he wasn't my creator. He was making an existential statement, and at the core, he was hinting at the reason why Buddhism is a load of horse shit.

"Let's say I was in a war. _Maybe the Second World War_. Now let's say the Germans are firing at me.

"But no, wait. The Germans were me in a past life, because in actuality everyone on the planet is part of God, meaning that _I personally am God_. Now why the hell would I want to put on a gray helmet and shoot myself? And why are there millions of copies of me also all shooting at other versions of myself? That, my friend, is bullshit, because I am not God, and you'd have to be insane for that to even work. It's just a lot of meaningless bloodshed for nothing.

"And so, your sleaze bucket of a father hit the nail on the head. Even I'm not that crazy. The world is full of pain and death, and it's ludicrous to imagine myself as the culprit for all of it."

I just stared at him. "Uh, gee. Thanks for sharing."

He clicked his teeth. "Don't mention it."

As I walked out of that office, I came to the realization that, if Extra were to be rescued, I'd have to do it myself.

But how?

A phone would have been nice, but I didn't know Amanda's number, and my pockets kept giving me rubbish.

An Acme Looniversity Flag. An Ecto Trap. A magazine about female rabbits in bikinis with an accordion folded centerfold picture.

I probably could have called Dane if I didn't keep finding rabbits and yo-yos and gag packets of snapping gum.

When I got outside, I just stood on the corner and stared across the street.

That was when I realized I was being _haunted_.

You see, if you blast a person with a Go Go Ghostblaster, they become a ghost, so Sam and Max were both floating around me, looking very transparent, and very pissed off, and I had made the mistake of tossing the Ecto Trap on the floor inside the police station.

"Guys," I said. "It was the mouse. I had nothing to do with it."

They didn't speak, they just hovered in the air, frowning at me. Honestly, I liked them better this way.

It should be obvious that they weren't much help.

It looked like I would have to _hoof_ it back..._anywhere_.

I wandered down the sidewalk a bit, staring at the storefront across the street.

Hoof.

_Hoofnagels_.

The ice cream shop was right across the intersection.

Mr. H obviously knew something about Amanda. I could only hope this included a means to contact her, so I could get a lift. The only problem was the Empty Busy Street.

I was mildly screwed. The only thing I could think to do was dig in my pockets for my phone...or maybe a car.

"Hey. Gramps."

When I got no reply, I said, "_Mac Daddy._"

No Beak popped out of my dress.

"You're a Hammerspace guru, aren't you?"

"I know some things..." he said. "But it's been awhile."

"I was able to turn noid and pull out a set of keys earlier. Can you figure out some way to bypass these cartoon clothes and pull out my cel phone?"

"Are you able to turn noid right now?" he asked.

After thinking it over a minute, I decided that, if thinking about inane brainless songs and things made me animated, I could probably de-animate by doing the reverse.

So I thought about work, and how that answering machine message probably will get deleted or ignored, and I'd either be fired or written up for a no-call-no-show.

That kind of helped, but not enough to fix my pockets.

I opened a couple trash cans, hoping to find the Inspector Gadget tunnel, but the only one I could find was leading off in the wrong direction, and when I tried picking it up and moving it, my alligator friend gave me a French kiss, tugging at my clothing until I shoved her back in the can.

I was kind of proud that _I was_, in fact, able to shove something that large back down there.

I sighed, frowning at my beakless friend.

"C'mon, MD. Surely you can find _something_ in my pockets to help me across that dangerous intersection!"

With a shrug, he dove into my dress, coming back out a second later with a powdered wig and a button coat in the style of George Washington.

I took the items, staring at them with skepticism. "And this is going to help me how?"

"All doodles are temporarily invulnerable during musical performances. This includes the Seemingly Empty Busy Street."

"Are you sure?" I said. "Because in my world, singing while crossing traffic was what _got_ me hit by cars."

"Things work differently here," MD said.

"I don't know how to play," I said. "And furthermore I don't have any instruments."

"That hasn't stopped anyone before."

"You're serious," I said. "Just, what. Pantomime playing something?"

MD nodded.

He grabbed the wig, dropping it on my head. "Perhaps you can play something...patriotic?"

With a sigh, I put on the presidential coat and acted like I were playing the piccolo, whistling _Yankee Doodle_ with my mouth as I stepped onto the street.

It actually worked. I even thought I heard drums in the background.

When my whistle got dry, Daddy Mack flew in to carry the notes.

I was rather shocked to find my feet settling on the opposite sidewalk.

When I pushed open the door to Hoofnagel's, I appeared to be some sort of long legged white bird with a long beak and a tricorn hat, possibly out of Drinky Crow or something.

I took off my coat, but only after discovering that it contained my keys, wallet, and cel phone. I decided to hold onto it and just ditch the wig and the hat.

The place was empty except for Mr. H and a blue bird in scrubs, who was weeping into a milkshake over in a booth.

I sat down in the seat across from her and just stared for a moment.

I'd seen a lot of weird things in this place, but this was a little off the wall, and kind of disturbing.

The sex auditor from National Baby Farms, having a breakdown.

"You're...Cupcake," I said. "Right?"

She didn't answer. She just kept crying.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"Oh, it's nothing," she said with a sniffle. "_I just aborted a bunch of babies._"

And then she started crying again. "I never did that before. I never would have done it at all if that noid hadn't polluted all our..."

She sprayed tears at me. "It wasn't natural, sleeping with a doodle, and she pretty much slept with everyone in sort of a roundabout way. I guess I was just supposed to accept that as normal and shove them down the line..."

I frowned. "Uh, gee. Sorry to hear that, I guess."

Hearing a door chime, I turned around, thinking it was going to be Amanda or something, but instead I see Me Too, Me Too Iguana waddling through the door.

"Hi, Mr. H," he said to the goat at the counter. "Have you seen Cupcake come in here? I've been looking all over."

Hoofnagel pointed a hoof at our table.

As the lizard waddled up to us, I turned real. His jaw dropped in astonishment when he saw me.

"I heard you were upset about this, but no need to get drastic!"

The bird blushed. "Oh no no no! This isn't what it looks like!"

Me Too Me Too didn't believe her. "_Of course it isn't_. Wink wink, nudge nudge, _say no more!_"

The bird turned red with anger. "Did you come here just to insult me?"

"No," said the lizard. "I came to tell you that I tampered with the LTA machines. All of them."

"What!" Cupcake cried in outrage.

Me Too swallowed and nodded. "You see, two of them go down to Miss Terious's lair..."

"And where do the other two go?"

He gulped again. "I'm not sure you've heard of it. It's a place called "The Small World Ride" in a "Disney Theme Park."

I raised an eyebrow, imagining hundreds of mutant half human cartoon characters pouring into niches behind those annoying little singing dolls, wondering if it would be an improvement.

The bird fainted, disappearing beneath the table.

"So the story about there being a portal to Disneyland isn't just bullshit?" I said.

"I don't know," said the iguana. "Some weird things have been going in and out of Cool World lately. I've heard rumors about a _real office building_ appearing in the middle of town..._full of noids like you_!"

I gawked at him. "Run that by me again?"


	45. Chapter 45: Shrevemac

The bird recovered from her faint, bursting out from under the table to French kiss the iguana.

Me Too staggered back, staring at her in disgust. "Whoa," he said, wiping his mouth. "What was _that_ about?"

"My conscience, that's what," she said. "I may be a conservative Jew, but I've always secretly been pro life. You don't know how happy your little act of sabotage makes me! For hours, I've had nothing but constant migraines, and now they're gone! You saved me. You may have saved my job!"

"You have more than one job," he said.

"(Ahem) yes, but now my hours won't get cut! The babies are alive!"

And then she jumps on _me_, Frenching me as well.

It amazes me how a bird beak, which isn't supposed to have lips, somehow gains lips when it's animated.

She suddenly pulled away, looking embarrassed. "Sorry."

"About what?" I blurted.

I guess the place was getting to me. Or maybe it was just my frustration about my sister, and the bird being kind of cute.

It seemed she did not agree, for she suddenly turned red, and I heard rather nauseating squishing sounds.

That did it. The mood was gone.

Actually, I said. "What I meant was, `_You'd better_ be sorry.'" And I shoved her out of the booth.

She stood on the tile floor, staring at me with little hearts popping out of her uniform.

"I thought you were disgusted by humans, and doodles sleeping with noids," I said.

"I am," she said, red faced. "What makes you think..."

She noticed the hearts.

"_Oh damn_," she whispered.

And then, forcing more sternness into her voice, "Look, I don't like you. It's just, with the noid-doodle hybrids and everything..." Her beak started trembling. "_I'm very confused._" And more hearts popped out.

"I'm sorry," I said.

Her answer, of course, was, "For what?"

Becoming even more red faced, she turned to speak to the lizard instead.

"We need to talk to management about getting our jobs back. We have enough to make them change their minds."

"You really think so?" Me Too asked.

Cupcake nodded, leading him to the door.

"Wait," I said to the lizard. "About that noid office building. Were you talking about the place down the street from the dump, or is there another one?"

"There's two of them," he said. "And a few more a couple blocks down from the Slash Club."

I cringed. "Great. Thank you, I guess."

As the two were stepping outside, the bird blew me a kiss, which flapped over and got me on the mouth.

Right. So, kinda weird. I wasn't even sure she knew that Amanda was my sister, or if she just liked stealing people's boyfriends. I really didn't go for poopy pants anyway.

I marched up to the goat. "Hey, Mr. H," I said as Drew Scout. "Have you seen Amanda around lately?"

He frowned, looking rather tense. "I'm sorry, she's...not the kind of character that patronizes this establishment."

I rolled my eyes. "Are you sure? She also goes by the name Vanessa Vixx."

The goat sighed. "She and her noid friend came by just a few hours ago."

I flickered human.

"I knew you two were destined to be together," he said. "_Little Amanda..._I can scarcely recognize her anymore. I'm glad she finally found a soul mate."

"Soul mate nothing," I said. "I'm her _brother._"

Mr. Hoofnagel shrugged. "Maybe that's what she needed."

Suddenly Mac Daddy popped out of my dress, fluttering over to the goat.

"Alex?" he cried.

"Shreveport?" the goat answered. "Is that you?"

"Lex! You old goat!"

Mr. H looked worried now. "What happened to your beak?"

"Miss Terious captured me and used me as her slave. Long story, but at least I'm free now. How about you?"

The goat cleaned a glass like a stereotypical movie bartender. "Oh, same old, same old." He pointed a hoof at me. "Is that your friend?"

"Yes," he said. "He's been trying to help _my son._"

Hoofnagel sighed and shook his head. "_Shreveport_. You always did keep the strangest friends."

"It's Mac Daddy now," the bird corrected. "The noid _named me._"

Mr. H's eyes widened.

I raised my hands defensively. "Actually, I think Shreveport is a much better name."

"Yes," said the bird. "But it didn't come from you."

I sighed. "What about Daddy Shreves? Or maybe Shrevemac?"

Shreveport looked indifferent. "Just don't call me late for dinner!"

Hoofnagel leaned toward the bird conspiratorially. "Did you know he's Amanda's sister?"

Daddy Shreves stared at me. "Little Amanda?"

"She's _big Amanda_ now," the goat said. and then he sort of cupped his hoof toward the bird, intending for me not to hear. "_I think they're sleeping together._"

Shreve gave me a wheezy old man laugh. "If he wants to do _that_, it's his business."

Irritated with the both of them, I pulled my phone out of my button coat and called Dane.

It rang several times, going to voicemail.

"Oh great," I groaned. "This is perfect."

"Dane," I said after the beep. "I'm stuck at Hoofnagel's. Can you please get someone to pick me up?"

She picked up in the middle of my speech. "What are you doing over there?"

I told her what happened to me.

"All right," she said. "We'll be over in a minute."

And then I waited.

"Mr. Deebes," said the goat. "Come over here. There's something I want to show you."

"How do you...?" I began, but I stopped when I supposed he knew my sister's last name.

Mr. H unfolded a newspaper on the counter, showing me the want ads section. "You were asking about the strange new buildings in town. I believe these are the ones."

There were more than I realized. In addition to Legitimate Solutions Services Inc, and Ewes Bank, there was a Navient, a Sunfresh and a Treasure Chest Printing LLC. You could tell they were real, and not fictional, by the serious, rather uninteresting way they phrased their ads, followed by the letters EOE. Even `Ewes' had that dry corporate flavor, hinting that it wasn't as cartoony as it sounded.

The other businesses, like Acme, all sounded rather suspicious, like, "Mad Scientist's Lab assistant wanted. _Massive growth opportunity_!" or, "Taffy Puller Machine Tech needed. _Must be flexible_."

Of course, I also saw ads saying "Safe sex - get paid", "Work from home, make money - be your own boss," or "Take a survey, win cash", but those are suspicious in both worlds.

"Mind if I take this?" I asked.

When he handed it over, I glanced at the front page, some story about the baby farms and that bird I just talked to. I only watched a little of its animated picture before I heard the door chimes and saw Dane walking in.

"Drew?"

I waved to her. "Hey."

"Nice outfit," she said with a grin. "It probably looks better when you're in your animated form."

Deciding it best not to `bite the hand that _drives_ me', I said, "Yeah, probably."

Dane smiled and waved at the goat. "Hey, Mr. H."

And then she frowned at me. "So your bird buddy's in trouble?"

I nodded. "Yeah."

"Damn. Let's go ask Amanda."

My sister was waiting outside in Chips.

Since Dane had the front passenger seat, she had to pull a lever and make a small motorcycle seat pop out from behind the gear box.

As she started up the engine and drove down the street, I told her about my predicament.

"Dane told me," she said. "It's terrible! That poor bird!"

"We've got to do something," I said. "But the cops aren't going to help. I already tried."

"Put up the Bat Signal!" Dane said. "Or call for Underdog!"

Amanda shook her head. "Batman won't help animals. I already tried that once. And I've called for Underdog too many times. He won't come anymore. I...think we're going to have to deal with this one on our own."

Dane sighed.

"Someone nabbed your bird friend?" I heard a voice calling from the back.

I hadn't noticed it, but Riffraff had been reclining on Amanda's bed the whole time. He sat up, looking at me with pity.

"Yeah," I said. "I tried to help, but Miss Terious's thugs got me. I barely made it out alive."

The cat rubbed his chin, looking worried. "Have you thought about calling Sonic the Hedgehog? He's into saving birds."

"He's too busy," Amanda said. "He has to save lots of animals all over the place."

"But he can _run fast_," Dane urged.

Amanda frowned. "Not _that fast_. And if he's tied up..."

"You should at least try."

My sister sighed. "All right. I'll send him a message, but I don't know if it will do any good."

Dane snapped her fingers. "The Ninja Turtles!"

"No," I said. "The last time I met them, they beat the crap out of me."

"What about the Rescue Rangers? _They_ help animals."

"Uh," I stammered. "I kinda helped kill Dale. I doubt they'll want to help me with anything. If we could bribe Fatcat, on the other hand..."

"Bribe!" Riffraff cried. "You _took out a loan_ to pay for a car!"

"This place is full of superheroes," Dane said. "Surely you can find someone..."

"I'm sorry," Amanda said. "It's not that easy."

She let out a heavy sigh. "We should go see dad. He'll know what to do."

Riffraff tugged on my outfit. "I see you found the slave shop."

"Yeah," I groaned. "I found it."

He pointed to the paper I had clutched in the crook of my arm. "What's that?"

"Want ads," I said. "I gotta pay for the car somehow."

I paused. "Of course, I saw a few things that look suspicious. I think we're going to have to take a brief detour."


	46. Chapter 46: Kung Fooey

Amanda had on her rubber ears again, and under her t-shirt and schoolgirl skirt, rubber leggings, and probably every other piece of the costume, since she also wore the glove sleeves. I guess she was trying to get in my pants again, but it had to be hot and sweaty under all of that.

Following the computer's directions to the address in the `fieds, we drove down the street a few blocks.

I saw the `Treasure Chest' building, a sprawling one floor concrete warehouse with loading docks on one side of the entrance. A couple real Hispanic guys were sitting on the edge of the dock, feet dangling over the galvanized rubber padding designed to safeguard against clumsy truck drivers. They stared into the cartoon landscape, pointing at things and jabbering away. A skinny white guy in a truck was talking to someone on a radio, or, at least, _trying to_.

A block down from there, we found a glass and concrete structure that said Prevenient Insurance on the side.

We also buzzed by the buildings I had seen outside the dump.

Legitimate Solutions Services Inc. was part of a two story brownstone structure, the upper portion belonging to National Unitarian College.

Its neighbor, despite the weird name, was obviously just your average banking juggernaut. People were crowded within its fenced in smokers patio, taking in the sights.

"It's like an amoeba engulfing a protozoa or something," I said. "Cool World just swallowed them."

"You recognize this stuff?" Dane asked.

I shook my head. "Sadly, yes. Still, I suppose it's better than the Las Vegas incident."

"Seen enough?" Amanda said.

I frowned. "I hope so."

The geography of Cool World is very confusing. We had to take the flying Owlmobile to get from dad's place to Holli's, but it seemed to be a lot shorter distance by car.

In a couple minutes, we were across a vast desert, parking in the fancy green cul-de-sac in front of the Frank Lloyd Deebes estate, staring at a marble fountain bearing the carved image of Holli with her clothes off.

Dad was out in the desert about a kilometer away. He had a lawn chair, a table with umbrella drinks on it, and an easel with nothing on it but painter's supplies.

It was at this easel he stood, painting...the air.

At first, it didn't make sense, his gestures the act of a madman, but as I watched him waving a horsehair sable dripping with cadmium yellow, I suddenly noticed a bright yellow blob appearing in the sky.

He dipped the brush head in turpentine until it was clean, then touched the blob with matte black. In a matter of minutes, it developed into an elaborately decorated dirigible, brilliant and sparkling like a jewel in the blue-purple evening sky.

In real life, I knew for a fact my dad wasn't God, but here...

"Even I'm not _that_ crazy," I muttered.

Dad gently placed the brush in turpentine, turning around to investigate the sound.

He looked at me with a start. "Son!"

He frowned when he noticed my outfit. "I see you're having fun."

I shrugged. "I lost a bet. Uh, listen. One of my friends is in trouble. I was hoping you could help. I tried the police department, but Harris..."

"He _always was_ a dick," Dad said.

I told him about Extra and the factory, and while I did this, a little monkey in a suit swapped his drinks.

Dad sighed, plopping down in his lawn chair. He pointed at the blimp.

"What do you think? Kind of a throwback to Winsor McCay. Good?"

Noting my blank expression, he said, "_Little Nemo in Slumberland_. First real comic book ever made. Of course, it was more of a Sunday paper fold-out..."

"Wow!" Dane said. "That's awesome!"

Dad smiled.

He offered her the brush. "Here. You're an artist. Why don't you try something?"

She frowned. "Paints really aren't my forte. I do photography and graphics. Pen and ink drawings. That kind of thing."

He clapped his hands and the monkey rushed to his side like the Roadrunner when it stops for bird seed. Dad ordered it to bring out a set of drawing supplies, and it was off.

"My bird is going to lose his beak," I said. "What should I do?"

He stands up for a moment, cupping his hands around his mouth as he sings, "_The cry goes out both far and near for Underdog! Underdog!_"

And then we waited.

Dad returned to his chair, watching the blimp.

The monkey returned with a set of pencils, pens and markers, which Dad handed to Dane.

"So you just draw in the air or something?"

Dad shrugged. "More or less."

I felt a twinge of jealousy as I watched him show her how to paint the sky.

"He's not going to come," Amanda said. "I told you Underdog doesn't like me."

After a few more minutes, just as we were about to give up, I see a brilliant flash, like a comet streaking down from the sky. And then...

There was Spider Pig.

That ordinary dumb pig from _The Simpsons Movie_.

With a cape.

As usual, it was not a conversationalist.

"Oh well. It was worth a shot," Dad said.

The caped hairless swine grunted unintelligibly.

"Surely there's another superhero we can call besides Under Pig," I said.

"You have to realize that a sweatshop full of little birdies isn't something a serious superhero would bother with. Most Marvel and DC characters won't touch it."

"Then get a comedic superhero," Dane said. "Like The Tick."

"That's no good," I said. "He'd bumble through everything and make a mess. Probably get us captured or something."

"I'm afraid you're not going to find many serious characters to help you," said Dad. "Unless they're animals."

Dane was making a flying death ship. Skulls and guns and heavy metal decor. It looked like something from _Metalocalypse_. "What about the Samurai Pizza Cats?" she asked.

I shook my head. "No way. They're in the bumbling category."

On the top deck of the death ship, a group of zombie-like figures played musical instruments, their speakers belting out the opening riffs to _For Whom the Bell Tolls._ "What about Starfox or Bucky O' Hare?"

Amanda shook her head. "We call those types of characters `spacelocked.' They are too busy fighting wars and such out in space to bother with us on the ground."

"The Ninja Turtles," Dad said. "You used to love them. You were always bringing those dolls to Visitation."

"That's not going to work," I said. "Master Splinter kissed my ass."

"He did _what_!" Dad cried.

As Kimono Rat, I said, "I meant _kicked_. He _kicked_ my ass."

Dad gave me a strange look. "Did he kiss you or kick you?"

I rolled my eyes. "_He attacked me_. So naturally I'm hesitant to go asking him for anything."

"I wouldn't either," Riffraff remarked. "If he attacks you and kisses you on the rump, _there's no telling what that guy might do!_"

"Do you want me to put you in a cat box?" I growled.

The feline raised his paws defensively. "I just went."

Dad paused in thought. "Remember that Disney movie about the mice who rescue an orphan girl from a wicked lady in a swamp?"

I nodded. "I wouldn't know how to call them. The same goes for the Great Mouse Detective. Plus I think I killed Watson. Anyways, if there's a cat, those guys are history."

Dad jumped to his feet. "I got an idea. Let's go in the house."

And so we march across the desert a few yards.

Dane was too obsessed with creating things to follow us. Even when Riffraff got bored and left her, she was too absorbed to move from the easel.

Dad leads me into his little dojo with the Kung Fu rabbit.

It's not Usagi Yojimbo, by the way. It's actually from an obscure computer game I could never get anywhere in because the main character's movements are molasses slow, and he could never quite get the hang of jumping across pits. Or deadly flying suriken. In Cool World, he has better reflexes and speed. That's how he can pull off those _Matrix_ stunts.

He's more realistic looking than Usagi. His head is elongated like a real rabbit, his eyes more on the side of his head. His tongue sticks out from beneath his large frontal incisors.

He cinches his black belt around his white karate school gi as Dad explains how I'm going to be trained as a martial artist.

"How about we just bring him along and _have him do it_?" I asked.

"He has to defend my house. Plus, what if he gets captured and you have to do it yourself?"

"I don't know," I said.

"You're fighting Miss Terious," he said. "She's not Doctor Doom. Your sister started on a villain just like her." He turned to his daughter. "Who was it again? Judge Minx? Judge Munoz?"

"Myxo," she said. "Evil rabbit with powerful weapons. That's why dad originally hired Chi Chang."

"Still," I said. "I really don't know if I can do all that. I got captured last time..."

"I'm going to tell you the same thing I told your sister when someone stole her lunch money at school a long time ago," Dad said. "You're in Cool World. There isn't regular emergency service. The police, as you have learned, are good for nothing. There's no ASPCA, no PETA. Nothing. If someone steals your car, you get it back. It's like the old west. The key is preparation."

"He's right," said Amanda. "And Ninja Rabbit is a really good teacher. I think this might help."

"When your sister was animated, she was an excellent fighter," the rabbit said.

"I'm still an excellent fighter," my sister replied.

She walked over to a stack of wooden boards, slamming them with a right handed chop.

"Ow! That _hurts!_"

Sighing, I approached the stack. "My Tekwando skills are a little rusty, but..."

I did that breath thing you do before chopping. I'm not sure what it does exactly, softens it with chi?

I raised a human knife hand, but when it swung down, it was animated and furry. Five boards shattered under my karate chop. I staggered backwards in surprise.

Riffraff, and Dane, who had slipped in without my noticing, clapped appreciatively.

"Wow," I gasped. "I've never been able to do that."

"How about this?" Amanda said, coming at me with a straight punch.

Without thinking, I blocked it, sending her to the floor with a sweep kick.

As I stared at her sprawled on the floor, I could see under her skirt, the skin tight rubber leggings attached to garters, and that rubber thong, but all I was thinking was how I shouldn't know how to knock someone to the floor like that.

"I know Kung Fu!" I gasped.

"Show me," said the rabbit.

I followed him to a kumite mat, we bowed, and suddenly I hear someone playing _Spybreak_ by the Propellorheads.

The first minute was great. Suddenly fuzzy and clad in a white karate gi, I threw a punch, blocked the rabbit's attack, then popped him in the face, using a counter strike. My friends and family are cheering me on, rooting for me.

But then he catches my foot as I try a wheel kick to his head, and it's like I'm Popeye with his spinach power depleted. He throws me through a paper screen.

I emerge as Little Kid Drew in a karate outfit.

With a yell, I charge at him, swinging my fists. Ninja rabbit just steps aside, letting me slam into a practice dummy.

I try again, and hit another screen. Dad doesn't complain. I guess he can just draw them back in.

"Stop trying to hit me and hit me!" the rabbit yells.

I get angrier, punching and kicking and everything I can think of. He flings me into a post.

"Stop trying to hit me and hit me!"

As a human, I charge and take a swing. He bowls me over.

"A car has fire in its engine," he says as we circle each other. "If fire erupts from the wrong place, the engine burns and the car goes nowhere. Your anger is a fire."

I give him my best karate punch, and he dodges it.

"Channel your anger like a piston."

I kicked. He swept me to the floor.

"Breathe. The fire of the dragon burns outward, not inward."

I breathe using that Chinese technique where you make a bowl with your hands and lift it up as you inhale, spreading your hands out and down as you exhale.

I breathe. I kick. I do a left - right combo that doesn't connect.

"Stop trying to hit me and hit me!" He's a frigging broken record.

And so I hit him.

A lot.

I throw him into a post.

Sprawled on the floor, the rabbit groans, "Your Kung Fu is good."

Dad puts a hand on my shoulder. "I think you're ready."


	47. Chapter 47: Miss You

Sneezer had been watching from the door the whole time. Clad in a smart little black vest, a button shirt and slacks, he looked twice as mature as he'd been originally. He almost looked cute, if I were into that sort of thing, which I wasn't.

His eyes had turned into Valentine hearts. He drifted into the room without touching the ground, until he landed in front of me.

"_Wow_," he breathed.

I rolled my eyes. "Yeah. _Wow. _Now that you know what I'm capable of, you might want to keep your hands to yourself."

Sneezer swallowed hard.

My sister put a hand on his shoulder. "I'm sure he, _she's_ only joking."

"Am I?" I said, sounding a lot less certain than I meant to be.

"Amanda..." I scolded.

"What? You'd make a cute couple."

I was about to say `what about us,' but I wasn't sure I wanted to go down that road, either.

I decided to pretend this little scene didn't happen.

"What about guns?" I asked. "I'd feel more comfortable about this rescue if I had some guns."

"Do you even know how to fire a gun?" Dad asked.

"Not exactly," I said. "But it won't matter at close range."

"You _do_ realize you're in a comic book world."

I said, "Why does that matter?"

He crossed his arms. "If this place deems that you are a PG type character, you won't be able to kill anyone with a gun, even if you can knock a fly off of a beer bottle a mile away. Plus, regardless of whether that is your curse or not, some villains are immune to bullets. Pull out a machine gun, and you can blast an outline of their body into a wall and never once hit them. The best you'll be able to do is _maim _them."

"I don't care," I said.

Shrugging, dad led me down a paper screen hallway to a door flanked by a pair of open mouthed monkey statues with chemical symbols on their bellies. A circular stained glass window above the door depicted a zodiac.

Dad reached into one of the mouths, pushing a sequence of buttons arranged to look like the periodic table.

"Seriously?" I said. "What happens if you forget a formula?"

Dad pushed buttons in the other monkey's mouth. "Then I'm drunk or really tired, and shouldn't have a weapon."

I frowned. "That makes sense, I guess."

Dad pulled one of the monkey's paws upwards, changing the rotation of the zodiac.

"Some people have safes and combination locks," I said.

"That's great in the real world," Dad said, typing in another formula. "But everyone in Cool World knows how to crack safes. _Nobody_ knows the chemical equation for bleach or a fatty acid.

"Whiskers clued me in on this after my armory got robbed a few years ago. In Cool World, any science above high school level is indistinguishable from magic, meaning that the average animated scientist doesn't know the first thing about doing science for real."

"You only have a GED," I pointed out.

"A lot of famous people through history have been self taught. Frankly, that's the only education I can get here. I study so my brain doesn't turn to mush. It's kind of like I left one prison for another."

"Then why don't you go back?" I said.

As if in response, he turns into an animated clown. "`Yes, sir. I take your banking products very seriously indeed.'" And then he honked his nose.

"`I'm sorry to inform you of this, madam, but the tumor in your husband's brain has spread. We're not sure how long he'll last in this condition.'" He honked his nose twice.

He gave me a frown. "That's why."

He cleared his throat. "Abraham Lincoln was self taught. So was Bill Gates."

I sighed. "`_To thyself be true_.'"

"He showed me the Land of Lost Stuff," Amanda said.

Dad solved a quadratic equation, and the wall opened up, revealing a metal chamber full of guns.

"Don't tell the FBI," Dad joked. "Felons aren't supposed to be armed."

The weapons looked fancy and strange, some resembling six shooters from cowboy films, if the cowboys had been punk rockers, mad scientists or space aliens.

I saw gatling guns, rifles, flintlocks, uzis and chainsaws, and they all seemed kind of super artsy, like something a kid from The Institute would take down to a rodeo, probably while wearing a rhinestone vest and leather pants.

"Awesome," Dane said, pulling down a sawed off shotgun ornately decorated with skulls in a _Dia De Los Muertos_ motif.

Dad grinned, letting her keep the gun.

I grabbed a pistol, stuffing it in my pocket before realizing the mistake.

"Shit," I said.

Dad frowned. "What is it now."

I pulled out a long string of colored handkerchiefs. "The gun's gone."

"What? What do you mean, gone?"

He didn't seem too terribly upset, probably because the guns were drawings, more or less.

I told him about Hammer Space.

He stared at me. "You actually_ went there_?"

I said, "Yeah? I thought I already explained how I got to the factory where they're holding Extra..."

"I thought if someone went in there, they'd be crushed to death by bowling balls or boats or some other random objects."

"No..." I replied.

Dad just shook his head, handing me a small automatic pistol in one of those police type strap holsters. I strapped it on the back of my kimono, figuring the Conceal part of Conceal and Carry wasn't possible.

"You might want a silencer," Dad said. He pulls one off a rack, screwing it onto my machine gun.

Without a word, Amanda casually stripped down to her rabbit suit.

Dad was shaking his head, but I found myself staring.

Looking indifferent, my sister strapped on a strange kind of gun belt that pointed both barrels at her crack, shoving a couple large guns with silencers into the holsters.

"Are you going to wear that to the battle?" Dane asked.

Amanda shrugged. "Why."

Dane just smirked. "No reason."

"Would you wear something different?"

Chucking, Dane said, "I guess not." And then, "You think I could get something like that made for me?"

"No," I said, but Amanda told her, "I think that can be arranged."

I cringed. "Let's do that some other time."

Examining a rack of samurai swords, I said, "What do we have to cut chains and handcuffs with?"

Amanda pulled a device resembling a pipe wrench off the wall. "Will this do? It's a carbon laser torch."

She demonstrated its use by slicing a piece of metal like an apple.

I chuckled. "I hope!"

Amanda handed me the cutter, secured in a handy carrying holster.

"Wait," said Dane. "Remember that scene from Roger Rabbit where he gets out of the handcuffs?"

I thought about it a minute, turning the holster over in my hands.

"If they could do that," I said. "Why aren't they already out?"

Shreve popped out of my dress. "Miss Terious has put Humor Dampers on all our restraints."

I narrowed my eyes. "Humor Dampers?"

The bird nodded. "Each cuff has been laser engraved with in-depth thoughtful analysis of several jokes, explaining why they are funny."

I groaned. "Blah-Ffy Taffy."

"Can't you just tell a different joke and break them out?" Dane asked.

Shreve shook his head. "Many have tried, but the cuffs have been made in such a way that you can't possibly break free unless you come up with funnier versions of all the printed jokes, and they're mostly inside the cuff where you can't even see them anyway."

"I don't get it," I said. "How does Miss Terious unshackle them? You know, to kill them, or move them to a different station?"

"She uses a key."

Giving my head another vigorous shake, I said, "And you're certain this carbon torch thing will work."

"Your guess is as good as mine," Shreve said. "Sometimes magpies have been able to pick the locks. Some lucky ones were even able to escape, but twice as many get caught."

"So.." I said. "The only special thing about them is the jokes?"

"I believe so."

"I hope you're right."

"What other types of weapons do we got?" I asked Amanda.

"Well..." she said. "The Owlmobile has a handful of interesting explosives, a very weird anti-theft alarm, and a secret compartment full of Owl Vibrators."

I stared at her. "I'm not sure I want an explanation."

"Yeah, I don't get it either," Amanda said. "_They're really scratchy. Even the feathery ones._"

Dad and I exchanged uncomfortable looks.

"Okay," I stammered. "At least there's explosives."

"The most direct route to Extra is from the back entrance," I told Amanda as we were walking out. "But I don't see how we can get there. I had to go to Hammerspace and have Miss Terious drag me further down, or in, or wherever it was."

"_The Owlmobile can fly_," Amanda said.

"So...just fly over the roof, then?"

She nodded.

And so we marched on down to the garage, climbing into the feather duster on wheels...and wings.

"Leave the vertical stabilizer out," Dad said through the open window as we were getting in. "Also, I think there's a break in the power steering line. It's okay in the air, but I wouldn't recommend driving it on the street too much. It turns, but you really got to fight it."

He shrugged. "Chevy Lumina. Even in Cool World, they're a piece of junk."

"But they're so _roomy_!" my sister said.

Dad sighed. "That's why it's yours."

Amanda didn't react, so I assumed she already owned it and just kept it in dad's garage for safekeeping or something.

He wasn't lying. Amanda had to put effort into wrenching the steering wheel to the left, just to avoid hitting the side of the garage, and even then, she broke off the passenger side mirror.

"_That's_ not passing inspection!" Dane remarked.

We drove at an angle through the desert, our course not straightening out until we became airborne.

The Owl Mobile swooped over the rooftops of twisting buildings, busy streets and factories.

After a bit more swooping, I saw the building with the giant rotating kookoo on the roof, with its innocent looking storefront framed on one side by a grandfather clock.

When we passed over the factory, the sky rippled like we were flying through a wall of water.

"What's that?" Dane said as she stared at it.

Amanda steered the vehicle lower. "We're crossing into Hammer Space."

I heard a rumble, and the sky grew dark.

"Uh-oh. That's not good."

It was storming, except it wasn't rain coming down.

Instead, I saw a shower of suited men in bowlers, exactly like that painting by Rene Magritte. They landed on buildings like limp two hundred pound rag dolls, breaking sky lights and knocking objects off rooftops.

"Great," I muttered. "It's raining men."

A pair of laser cannons popped out of the roof of the Knickknocker place, blasting several of these men to bloody bits.

The kookoo spun around to face us, the laser guns aiming threateningly at our vehicle.

A second later, I see blood pouring down the windows.

It seems we had bowler men dropping down on us, and we didn't even know it. Someone in the building had just spared us from a nasty collision.

Amanda brought the vehicle in lower. As she did, I suddenly noticed a windowless wooden `skylight' slowly extending on a track, and in seconds, I see a big kookoo clock emerging from the surrounding building like some kind of giant Transformer toy.

The hands turned to twelve, and a helicopter landing pad shot out of its door. It reminded me strangely of that scene from Star Wars where they met Billy Dee Williams in the cloud city.

"Should we land?" Amanda asked.

Dane grinned. "Totally!"

"No," I said. "It's either a trap, or a potential trap once they find out we're not Owl Woman."

"What does Owl Woman do?" Dane asked.

I rolled my eyes. "Collect overdue books. More importantly, she's the mother of one of Miss Terious's friends. Land in the back next to the trucks."

Amanda dropped the vehicle lower. "So much for the element of surprise."

The Owlmobile's jet thrusters turned ninety degrees, gently slowing our descent like some kind of fancy VTOL aircraft.

We settled on the blacktop unmolested.

Well, except for the bowler hat guy slamming into our roof.

The windows were so red you could barely see out. It was like we'd parked in a vampire car wash.

"Did you say we had explosives?" I said as more blood poured down the window.

Amanda opened a panel on the wall, and a bunch of gray and orange vibrators fell to the floor.

"Oops! Wrong one."

She shoved them back in the compartment, but I could hear one of them buzzing angrily behind the closed lid. "I forgot I moved this stuff around."

She placed an owl shaped paperweight in a socket on the floor, then spun it around like she were trying to open a combination lock on a gym locker.

A Stow and Go storage compartment is not a feature of a Lumina APV, but neither are wings and a library kiosk. Inside the bin, I saw hundreds of what appeared to be large _Book It!_ pins.

"Is she that desperate for free pizza?" I asked.

Amanda didn't get the joke.

"Look," I said. "I don't think telling an evil henchman to read five books in exchange for a personal pan is going to solve anything."

"Really?" Dan said. "I think that might actually work!"

Amanda turned one of the buttons over, showing me a rather unfriendly looking electronic device. I could see the black letter C and the number 4 printed on part of it.

"I'm not really sure that's what they mean by `bombard them with literature.'"

"They give you a pizza for reading books?" my sister asked, bewildered, maybe jealous.

"Only if you're in first grade," I said. "When you grow up, you find reading has its own reward, such as a six figure income, when you've studied enough to get a Masters Degree in Medical Science, or Biochemistry. Anything medical, in fact."

"What about art?"

I shrugged. "You can win the Daily Double on Jeopardy."

She clipped a handful of them to her gun belt.

"How do they work?" I asked.

"You just stick them to something and push down."

"What if they stick to your pocket?"

She shrugged. "They don't." And she pointed to the buttons on her belt.

"Right," I said, "Cartoon logic."

I stuck one in the pocket of my Harry Potter costume I was suddenly wearing, again forgetting how unreliable my pockets were. I tried to pull it out again, but only ended up with a bag full of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Jellybeans, and only the grass, earwax and sweaty feet flavored ones. I threw it away.

"Here's the plan," I said. "I'll try the lock, and if Miss Terious has changed the combination, you use one of these bombs. Once we're in, I'll try to free those birds. I'd like you to set some bombs on those machines once the birds are clear so the villainess can't set up operations again."

"What about me?" Dane asked, waving her gun.

"You can cover me," I said, then gave Riffraff a sideways glance. "Your pet can help."

"Hey!" Riffraff protested. "I'm not anyone's-"

But then he made eye contact with her. The girl smiled.

"Okay, so I agree with the plan, but don't nobody say she's my owner. We're just friends."

"What will I be doing?" Sneezer asked.

I frowned. "I guess you can sneeze on some of the machines or something."

Amanda handed the mouse a container of pepper.

"Uh..." he stammered. "About that..."

"What now?" I said with a sigh. "Did growing up make you lose that amazing superpower or something?"

"Yes and no," he said. "It's still sort of like before, but..."

"It's weaker," I guessed.

"Not really. It's...hard to explain."

"All right," I said. "Just sniff your pepper around those machines and...cover them with snot or whatever else you can get out of your nostril."

I opened the sliding door. "Let's do this thing."

The moment I said this, another bowler hat man hit the pavement in front of me.

Making sure to look up at all times, I rushed to the back door, typing in the sequence of numbers Extra had taught me.

Nobody had changed the security code, despite my helpful suggestion. It clicked open.

I silently waved for Sneezer to hold the door as I darted behind an assembly line for the manufacture of door frames. A pair of owls, a crow and a handful of assorted birds from the corvidae family were busy at work carving.

Breathing in calm, controlled breaths, I knocked out the faceless blue guardians with a few snap kicks, hammerfists and a chop. A second later, I was freeing the owl and a row of birds.

The laser cutter performed its task exceptionally well, a couple times nicking the prisoner.

As I moved on to the kookoo clock assembly station, the owls began singing the chorus to _Miss You_ by The Rolling Stones. Appropriate, since the singers sounded owl-like in the original anyway.

Amanda darted through the door, whipping out her silencer pistol. She felled another guard in a smooth point and click motion. A pair of newly freed birds joined in the chorus.

For a few minutes, I ceased to be me. I was a Saturday morning cartoon about a Kung Fu French maid rat, slow motion kicking ass as a flock of emancipated birds flocked around me and sang the opening to _Miss You_.

Amanda slapped _Book It!_ bombs on the machinery, the log sawing station exploding silently as Sneezer, by means of the black pepper, blasted a cluster of poor birdies free from the circular saw.

Okay, so they may have been magically transformed into creepy looking mushroom people, but at least they were free. I'd have to have a little chat with Sneezer about his nasal sorcery later.

I beat up the _Space Jams_ bullies, rushing to the aid of my little avian friend.

Once free, Extra nuzzled me, then dove into my dress as I set the other prisoners free.

Station after station exploded.

I thought I was doing good until I reached the last assembly stage in the building, where a grandmotherly looking bird and two chicks worked between a pair of sorry looking sparrows, crafting dresser knobs.

The moment I touched the cutter to Granny's cuff, a knife edged throwing star made of bone came flying at my hand, cutting me as it knocked my tool to the floor.

The music stopped.

I spun around and saw a tall pale figure in a long black robe crisscrossed with chains.

It looked like a lop eared albino rabbit, except it had two sets of eyes, no nose or hair, and its mouth looked like something that belonged on a cockroach.

He had appeared out of a cloud of smoke, from who knows where.

"Someone's going to have to pay for these damages," he said.

"I would," I replied. "But I don't approve of animal cruelty."

"Judge Myxo!" Amanda gasped.

She fired more than a dozen rounds at the creature, but they all missed, probably because he was the minor henchman.

"So you're my sister's arch nemesis," I said.

The creature grinned. "She has a sister! _How interesting._"

I picked up my torch, cutting Granny free.

Myxo threw another bone suriken, but I caught it expertly between my fingers, flinging it back.

The weapon embedded itself in Myxo's robe. He uttered a curse.

"You have _no idea_ who you are messing with!"

I shrugged. "Probably not. But, considering the fact I've seen a dozen movies that use that same line, and the line is normally said by a woman..." I resumed work on freeing the chicks like he wasn't there.

I flickered human for a minute, whistling _Miss You_ until I turned into a doodle again.

Instead of turning into Ninja Maid, I looked down and saw I was one of the _Gummi Bears_. Furry, yellow, clad in sort of medieval-esque peasant rags. I doubted I had any Gummi Berry Human Growth Hormone cocktails in my pockets, so this form didn't seem all that useful. Still, it was animated.

"Stop ignoring me!" Myxo yelled, throwing another blade weapon.

I tried to block, but being some sort of simple minded female bear, I ended up with a blade stuck in my arm. When I pulled it free, I was real, and bleeding from a real wound.

It's strange to think of singing songs that really annoy me as a survival trait, but I was now protecting myself with _Mamma Mia_ and _Do Wah Diddy Diddy_.

Judge Myxo suddenly let out an evil laugh.

When I looked back to see what was so funny, I saw him pulling out a piece of paperboard with writing on it.

"And the mystic Egypt tossle dangling down," he read. "Old sleeper man, shish, don't wake him. Up one hand broom star was an obi man revered throughout the bone knob land."

I stared at him like he'd grown another nose. "What?"

"Don't listen to him!" Amanda shouted, but it was too late.

"His magic black purse slit creeped open, let go flocks of them. Shish sookie singabus, snored like a red merry go round horse..."

"Don't listen!" my sister repeated. "He's using the Magic Band of Beefheart!"

The next moment, I was completely human.

I think it was the illogical juxtaposition of the poetry that did it. While Mamma Mia was brainless enough to make me animated, the magically psychedelic lyrics forced my brain to attempt comprehension, which disrupted the thoughtlessness.

Myxo's skeletal hand flashed out, and I had a real looking bone blade sticking in my non-animated chest.

"Splendid," the creature said. "It works just as well as it did on your sister."

He didn't walk, he drifted closer, like some sort of ghoulish specter.

"...And an acid gold bar swirled up and down, up and down, in back of the singabus, and the pantaloon duck white goose neck quacked, webcore, webcore."


	48. Chapter 48: Triage

Myxo's weapon was real somehow. For this reason, it had penetrated whatever cartoon defenses I may have had. I tried singing the theme song to TV's _Maude_, but it didn't make me feel any better, or remove the obstruction.

I staggered backwards, grabbing the edge of a destroyed assembly station for support.

This was no surface wound. It was in there deep, and not in a safe spot like the meat of my shoulder or my arm.

My heartbeat was irregular, I was having difficulty breathing, and I was in a lot of pain. I hoped I was only having a panic attack, but then I _had been_ wounded.

Honestly, I was trying to run away.

It had been fun playing a hero for awhile, but I hadn't intended to die over it.

I know a few things about first aid, and one of them is that you don't always want to rip a deadly piece of rebar or a harpoon out of your body, because there's a chance that the action of pulling it out will make the wound worse, maybe even puncture a vital organ.

Myxo's weapon could have any number of breakable parts, or fish hook-like serrated edges. Better to play it safe.

Of course, I figured I'd probably die before anyone could get me to a capable surgeon anyway.

...Or perish on the operating table beneath the incompetent hands of _The Simpson's_ Doctor Hibbert and Daffy Duck in a surgical mask.

I thought it foolish to rip it out like some guy in an action movie, so I left it in.

"No!" Sneezer screamed, pulling out a pair of pistols.

The guns blazed, the bullets flew, but none of them hit the Judge. The rabbit either did the limbo and dodged it like a _Matrix_ character, or the bullet missed.

Dane popped out with her rifle, firing off a few shots, but they strayed from the target.

A moment later, I see Myxo's hands flash out with bone suriken.

"Sneezer!" I yelled, but it was too late. He collapsed with two of them in his chest.

I heard a pissed off cat sound, then Riffraff was on the rabbit's face, clawing and scratching and growling.

My sister took this opportunity to fire a few more shots. One hit the target, somewhere around the knee, and black blood sprayed from the robe. The other shots missed.

The birds were watching all of this from the rafter, keeping a wary distance from the action.

"Help us!" Amanda shouted to them.

Extra popped out of my shirt (now my regular apparel), blowing the cavalry charge on a bugle.

The birds swooped down from the rafters. There were so many flapping wings in the way that I completely lost sight of the judge and Riffraff.

Amanda rushed to my side, examining my injury. I'm not sure that's proper triage, but Sneezer was animated, and I wasn't, so whatever.

"Why didn't you pull that out?" she asked.

"Because I'm not a fan of internal hemorrhaging," I said.

She furrowed her brow. "So how many books _did_ you have to read to get your six figure income?"

I groaned. "I don't have a six figure income. I just watch a lot of medical shows."

She gasped. "So that's all it takes to be a doctor?"

I was flickering animated, probably because this little comedy routine was distracting me from serious things. "No. That's actually _never_ what it takes to be a doctor. I'm afraid I'm going to die."

"Why?" she said. "Aren't you a doctor?"

"No. I'm definitely not a doctor."

Before I could make a move to stop her, she yanked the object out of my chest.

The blade came out covered in red paint.

It didn't feel good. I definitely felt like something vital had been damaged.

I sighed in frustration, glancing back in the direction of our lop eared foe.

He was nowhere to be seen. Riffraff lay panting on the floor.

"Where's Myxo?" I said.

"I don't know," the cat gasped. "He went up in a puff of smoke!"

Dane frowned as she looked around the room. "He's dead, right? We killed him. With the birds. Right?"

"No," I said. "There's no body. He's definitely alive, and planning to kill us. Don't you read any comic books?"

Amanda reached into my pockets, pulling out a banana.

"That's not going to help," I said. "Just tear a piece off my clothing and tie it around the wound."

Instead of doing that, she pulled a multicolored bandanna out of my pocket.

"That will do."

And so she bandaged the wound with it.

"I'm probably going to die anyway," I said. "Something will rupture or get infected, and that will be it. The question is when."

"It may be longer than you think," Amanda said. "Dad told me that Officer Harris got into a bad motorcycle accident before he came to Cool World. He says the accident happened somewhere around 1940, but Harris somehow remained young and in perfect health for more than fifty years, until the Vegas incident forced him back into your world. Then he started bleeding and everything."

She cinched the scarf tight. "He was one hundred percent noid. You could probably live twice that long."

"That's different," I said. "Isn't it? I mean, he got injured _outside_ Cool World?"

Amanda only shrugged.

I glanced over at the white shape sprawled on the floor. "Sneezer?"

No answer.

"Sneezer!" I shouted, hurrying to his side.

It seemed, despite all the pain, I wasn't as injured as I thought, and flickering animated, so I went ahead and pushed myself.

The mouse looked dead. Amanda and I gazed at him in sadness.

My sister grabbed his chin, moving his head back and forth. Sneezer's eyes had turned into a pair of letter Xs.

Amanda put her fingers to his throat, listened to the side of his chest that didn't have blades sticking out of it.

She looked at me and shook her head. "These weapons are real. You're part human. That's the only reason why you lived."

Dane and Riffraff joined us around the mouse's body.

"Wait," said Amanda. "Maybe if we pull these blades out of him..."

She yanked out the suriken, then held her face to the bloody chest.

She sighed. "I thought that would work."

My sister and I stared at each other.

"What now," I said. "Do we have a cemetery or something?"

Amanda put a hand on my shoulder. "You were closest to him. If anyone can save him now, it's you."

"Me?" I cried in disbelief. "What can I do?"

I frowned at the dead body.

"I don't feel like crying. We don't have that kind of relationship. To me honest, I didn't really like him that much."

Amanda looked disappointed. _Disappointed in me._

I swallowed.

"True love's kiss," she blurted.

"Excuse me?" I said.

I had heard her just fine. I just didn't want to admit that I understood what she said.

"A few years ago...I had a run-in with Myxo. I almost..." She shuddered. "_I died_. But daddy, he kissed me. On the head. He was crying."

She turned her face toward Sneezer.

"Well," I said. "_It's been nice knowing him._"

Amanda gave me this face that said, "Are you kidding me."

I rolled my eyes. "_Oh all right._"

And so I...gave Sneezer a chaste peck on the forehead.

Nothing.

"_Drew..._" Amanda urged.

I glared at her. "I'm sorry, Amanda. _Sneezer's gone._"

"Is that how you treat all your friends?" she asked.

"And who makes him sleep on a bed that drops him into a bottomless pit? I don't see _you_ crying."

"He's closer to you," she said.

Then Extra pops out of my shirt to give _his_ two cents. "What happened to the master I knew? The one who cares deeply for birds and other helpless animals?"

I heard a chorus of sad yeahs coming from the rafters. When I looked up, I saw dozens of pouty bird faces.

I reddened. "Seriously?"

"It's just a kiss, Drew," Amanda said quietly. "_One_ _kiss._"

I leaned over the body. "You'd better not be putting me on."

His chest wasn't moving. This didn't seem to be a joke.

It didn't look like he was playing dead to steal a kiss.

I hoped.

I came closer to his head.

"As the rat," she said. "He really liked you as a rat."

I was flickering between Scouter Drew and my real self. "I don't have that much control."

"I think you do," she said. "Breathe."

I did that little cyclic breath routine, and I was French Maid Rat again.

I came closer.

And closer.

I touched my muzzle to his, parting his lips.

I pulled away, waiting for something to happen.

Nothing.

"Is that the best you can do?" my sister asked.

"Yes," I said indignantly.

"_Drew..."_

"Amanda!" I cried. "This is gross!"

"You came _so close_. Just try a _little bit harder_. Maybe you could pretend it's me."

"Dammit," I grumbled. "_Fine._"

_Pretend it's me._

I really didn't want to do it.

Really, really didn't want to do it.

But I did it anyway.

I closed my eyes, pressed my lips to his, and I pretended to be kissing..._someone else_.

When my eyes came open, I still saw the letter X instead of his eyes.

I sighed in relief, but couldn't help but feel a teensy bit disappointed.

I shook my head. "Guys, it didn't work."

That's when Sneezer's eyes turned back into beady little dots.

His arms shot up around my neck, and he brought me down to his face, kissing me passionately.

I flailed my arms, tried to push him away.

Then I stopped struggling.

I kissed back.

What's happening to me? I thought. Oh God, what's happening to me?

I closed my eyes and kissed.

Do I care?


	49. Chapter 49: For the Birds

Okay. In my defense, I _was_ a female animated rodent when I kissed Sneezer. In addition to giving me Kung Fu powers, I guess it gave me estrogen or something. I quickly caught myself and pushed him back.

"Whoa, whoa!" I cried. "That's enough!"

The mouse gave me a mischievous smile. "Are you telling that to me, or _yourself_?"

I blushed, something that's a lot more difficult to hide when you're a doodle.

"Um, a little of both?" I said in an embarrassed squeak.

Sneezer chuckled softly, Valentine hearts popping out of his body.

"The floating guys _said_ I wouldn't like it," I muttered.

My form remained the way it was, like it had gotten stuck that way. I felt a stab of fear.

I had no desire to live forever as a doodle, especially a female one.

...With a perverted creep of a boyfriend.

Dane was staring at me, open mouthed. "Wow. This is so weird!"

"Tell me about it," Riffraff said with one paw on her jeans. "I'm getting sexually confused."

"Is that why your paw is on my butt?"

Looking embarrassed, he quickly took his paw away.

"You did it!" Amanda cheered, grinning at me. "I knew you could!"

"Master has a big heart," Extra agreed.

"Yeah," Sneezer breathed, putting his arms around me. "She _does_."

I swallowed. "It's not _that_ big."

I pushed him away, hiding behind my sister.

I cleared my throat. "We should get out of here. We don't know what kind of bastard is going to come crawling out of the woodwork next."

Amanda punched me in the gut.

"Hey!" I said. "What the hell's that for?"

"Let's pray you won't get to find out."

On cue, I see a swarm of termites scuttling out of one of those giant felled trees.

They just kept coming, pouring off the log, onto the floor, in a ...suspiciously symmetrical pattern.

"You're right," I said. "I don't want to find out. We did our good turn for the day. Let's go."

I threw the door open, ushering Amanda, Sneezer and Riffraff out, but Dane lingered among the wreckage.

"C'mon!" I cried.

Dane looked at me like I were nuts. "Aren't you the least bit curious?"

"Yes," I admitted. "But not _that_ curious. I almost got killed by a _rabbit_. If I face any more shit today, I'll really be dead. Let's go."

She nodded, but then pointed at the bugs. "Look! They're forming a boot!"

I did a double take. I saw the bugs actually assembling themselves into boot formation.

"If that's the boot," I said. "I don't want to see the feet."

Dane frowned, marching outside.

I was the last to go, waving my feathered friends on to freedom.

The sky was clear. The rain of bowler hat people had passed, much to my relief.

All of a sudden, it was like I was in the middle of a huge pillow fight. All the birds in the entire factory, all nuzzling me at once. I couldn't even see for a moment. My dress felt like one of those vibrating beds.

And then I was rising up in the air. I guess they wanted to give me a lift.

It wasn't just me. They were lifting Dane, Amanda, Sneezer, and even Riffraff.

I glanced at my hand, then looked again, because it was now covered in brown feathers.

I noticed I now also had a beak.

And bird legs.

Kind of like Cupcake, but modeled after a robin.

Humanoid.

Male.

Would these transformations stabilize over time?

Did I _want_ them to stabilize?

Were the floating guys writing me into another romance? Like the one with Sneezer?

_Did_ they write that one? Or was it all me?

I didn't know which would be worse, me..._changing teams_, or _them making me_ _change teams_.

Was this bird thing an alternative to Sneezer Hell? Or was this just some sort of costume like the French maid?

When I glanced over at Dane, I noticed she had on something that looked like the Carnival costume from the movie _Rio_. It was cute, but I sincerely hoped the floating guys weren't trying to pair _us_ up.

Amanda still had on her bunny costume, but now it had a feathered cape and a beak like those guys in that _Battle of the Planets_ cartoon. She could almost pass for that sorceress that lounges around in Castle Grayskull.

Riffraff..._got a chicken suit_.

The birds carried us over the building, peppering the rooftop with generous amounts of droppings.

In response to the bombardment, the human raindrop destroying laser cannons popped out of the roof, blasting bursts of energy at the flock.

The birds, despite their long captivity, could fly with the expert maneuvering of jet fighter pilots. In seconds, we were out of there, soaring past the smoggy smokestacks of the Acme factory.

I briefly wondered what would become of the Owlmobile, but decided that anyone who stole it would be worse off for the theft.

We kept going.

We passed over a few smaller factories, then a picturesque suburban metropolis. The kind that always contains at least one depressed computer generated kid with a broken home with a deep longing that can only be filled by some ridiculous father substitute, be it a robot, the Easter bunny, or a talking dog with Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Pixarland.

I actually could see at least two houses on every street where a little girl or little boy paused to sigh as they pushed open their front door, or stepped out to the bus.

Sigh. I have it so rough.

Shut up. Your dad didn't go to state prison for manslaughter.

The birds flew on.

"Um, Extra?" I called.

"Yes, master?" The yellow bird flapped closer to me.

"Extra, where the hell are we going?"

"You are a great hero to our people!" he said. "We only wish to _take you home_, to properly thank you!"

"Home," I repeated.

"Yes, master. Home."

What I didn't know was, how would _I_ get home?

The suburb ended, and we were flying over a forest, pretty as a painting.

Okay, so it technically _was_ a painting.

The birds, of course, had been chatting up a storm, talking about what they'd do when they got home, catching up on their old lives, conversing about Miss Terious and her henchmen, both what bad things they did and the stupid embarrassing things they did when they thought no one was looking. They were making plans, mostly, talking about where to get replacement beaks and building up the Bird Military. The topics went all over the place.

It seemed many really weren't that fond of singing. They just did that out of fear.

But others enjoyed it, as long as they could sing what they wanted, when they wanted.

A starling broke into a rendition of Beefheart's _Bat Chain Puller_ but they got shushed, in respect to me.

The trees grew taller and talker, twining together to form the scary kind of forest you see in some of those serious scenes in old Disney cartoons. Some of the trees had faces on them, and they stared at us as we passed by.

And then we reached a clearing, with a shimmering bubbling brook and fields full of daisies and buttercups, where stereotypically cute bunny rabbits hopped around and nibbled plants. One of them had a calculator. If you've watched a few cartoons, you know where that gag was heading.

In the center of this _Bambi_ style backdrop, there stood a massive oak tree, in whose branches stood a gigantic spherical nest.

But this was no ordinary nest. No, this was like a _palace_ made to look like a nest.

The branches around the palace swarmed with thousands of animated birds of every species, including penguins, for some reason.

Don't ask me. Not my idea.

They nested in the front of the palace, because the front consisted of nothing but thousands of artfully twisting branches shaped into cubbyholes and burrows.

We swooped down through a gate made of beautifully twisted branches, and it was like we were in that magical palace that wizard made out of trees in that one _Narnia_ movie. A big cathedral-like place with a barrel vaulted bent wood ceiling, and arcades made of tree branches, one arcade actually leading to a _video arcade._

All around us were the sounds of joyous reunions, happy chirping and chattering.

The birds deposited us on the floor, and we wandered ahead, marveling at all the strange sort of architectural features that didn't require any tools.

In every place where the walls, ceiling and floor were not covered in bent wood, the birds had stuffed every type of shiny piece of garbage, from soda cans to hubcaps to tinsel. Millions of pieces of shiny trash.

To be fair, the trash looked _good_ the way the framed and hung it. They had scrubbed it clean of food residue and grit. It sparkled. I suppose you could call that recycling.

Birds gathered around us as we wandered down the center aisle toward an apse-like structure at the far end.

The birds bowed before us, like peasants saluting royalty.

Dane giggled as a pair of pigeons nested on her shoulders, rubbing against her neck.

"_You guys_!" she cried. "All I did was free you from that little holding cell! It's okay!"

That actually caused _more_ to lavish their affection on her.

I was covered with them too. In fact, we all looked like a group of moving perches.

When we reached the dome at the end of the passage, I heard a loud, oddly familiar female voice call out, "Welcome Honored Heroes, to the Bird Palace! Capitol of the Bird Kingdom!"

The voice reverberated through the building, sounding rather impressive and intimidating.

There was a noisy flapping of feathers, then a mass of birds dropped down from a hole in the dome, bearing an elaborately wrought throne, upon which was seated a very familiar looking bluebird in a fancy royal gown.

"On behalf of all birdkind," she said. "I offer my most sincere thanks for your rescue of my dear subjects from the tyranny of the wicked and cruel master Miss Terious. Where is the brave and selfless hero who masterminded this operation? Send him forward so I may reward him for his valiant efforts."

I stared at her, unsure if I wanted to volunteer myself.

Extra got behind my back, pushing me forward.

"He is here, your majesty."

Although they had given me a bird costume, I was back in my human form now.

When I came closer, I was a hundred percent sure I recognized her, unless this were like one of those cartoons about the identical twins.

"Auditor Cupcake?" I asked.

She frowned, her eyes widening in shock.

"Oh my God. _You're that man from the soda shop!_"

And then she pooped herself.

"Sorry." She cleared her throat like she just hadn't made a number two.

"As reward for your valiant efforts, I bestow upon you the honor of Consort. (Or Royal Concubine, if you prefer)."

"What!" I cried. "No!"

"It is too late!" she continued. "I can't say I exactly like it myself (too much), but I have sworn a Bird Oath, saying that the first man, woman or thing that rescues my oppressed people from the yoke of Miss Terious's oppression will be the honored recipient of my royal _love, _for so long as we both shall live."

"Um," I stammered. "I really appreciate the honor, but...I'm sorry, I can't."

I glanced nervously at Sneezer, then Amanda.

I thought about saying, "I'm taken," but didn't want to give either party the wrong idea, so I just said, "_I can't._"

"I'm afraid that's all I have to offer you," Cupcake said. "My people are not wealthy, and the Bird Video Games cannot be removed from the arcade. We have no reward to give you..."

She spread her legs, smoothing the fabric of her dress between them.

"...Other than my affection."

"How about a kookoo clock?" Riffraff asked.

Instantly, more than a hundred scowling beaks surrounded him.

"Take him to the dungeon!" Cupcake shouted, pointing her finger at him.

A flock of seagulls, and the _band members from Flock of Seagulls_ stepped out from one of the arcades, dragging Riffraff away.

"I'm sorry!" he shouted. "It was only a joke!"

Still, they carried him away.

I shrugged indifferently. That's _one way_ to end my year of slavery, I thought.

"Riffy!" Dane cried, looking outraged and upset.

Clenching her fists, she faced the queen and shouted, "Make that _two_ kookoo clocks!"

And the seagulls dragged her away as well.

I snickered a little, smirking at Amanda.

She didn't look amused.

"What?" I said. "At least Riff's in good company."

"Drew," Amanda said. "You should do something."

"What?" I said. "It's a _dungeon_. _Run by birds_. I think they'll be okay."

"He's right," Cupcake said. "It's a very nice dungeon. It even has an X-Box. And on Shabbat, they will be released to attend service. _If they choose._"

"So." I said. "You _swore_? _A Bird Oath_? Saying you have to _sleep with the guy that frees a bunch of birds_?"

"Yes," she said. "A _very solemn_ Bird Oath."

"Then _take back_ your Bird Oath," I said.

I leaned closer, whispering, "I won't tell anybody. I promise."

"I'm sorry," she said. "Once a Bird Oath is spoken, it cannot be revoked."

"You're the queen of all birds," I said. "Shouldn't that entitle you to some privilege?"

"_Yes..._" she said, acting as if she didn't know where this was going.

"Then...use your royal privilege to revoke the Bird Oath."

"Um..." She paused, as if in thought. "_No._"

"Don't you work at a _baby farm_?" I said, hoping for an excuse, any excuse, to sneak away.

She smiled. "Yes, but I have _eight thousand hours of PTO_."

Damn.

Extra had been flying away from me for awhile, but now he once again graced my presence, landing on my shoulder. "This is a great honor, master! Many birds would give anything to enjoy such intimacy with our queen!"

"Then why don't _you_ take care of it?" I challenged.

He blushed. "No. I would not deprive you of this great honor."

I got up, taking him to the side of the room.

"I really don't like her," I whispered. "You can take her if you want."

"I don't like her either, master," he whispered back. "She poops on herself."

I groaned. "I think we're in agreement on that one, Extra."

"I am sorry for you, but I am also proud to have you as my master," he said.

The queen stood up from her throne. "Now. Would you care for something to eat, or should I just..._show you to your rooms?_"

"Food, please," I said.

A group of puffins opened the floor, and we took an elaborate wood staircase down to a banquet hall, a nice groin vaulted structure crafted from curving branches. A long table of a similar style stood in the center, surrounded by filigreed wood chairs that couldn't move on account of them being part of the floor.

The walls, of course, were covered in garbage, interspersed here and there with pictures of previous rulers, like the King Fisher, The Raven King and Emperor Penguin.

Naturally, I had the seat of honor, next to the queen.

I pointed to the furniture. "These are neat. Who made them?"

"My subjects," she said. "You must understand that we do not hate woodworking. Some actually love it. But when someone forces them to do it all day and all night, _with no Shabbat..._"

"Um, okay..." I said with a frown.

The meal was literally for the birds. Suet cakes, bugs, seeds, that kind of thing.

Amanda took a few handfuls of lumpy purple caterpillars, gulping them down. "Slimy, yet satisfying."

I rolled my eyes. "In real life, grubs aren't nearly as pretty as what they show in cartoons."

Amanda swallowed another. "And that's a bad thing?"

I tried a suet cake, and it tasted like a plain rice cake.

I pretended like it was a Rice Crispy Treat and it was tolerable.

"So," I said after that unsatisfying morsel. "What else do you guys normally do around here?"

Cupcake shrugged. "Oh, I don't know. We sing, we fly, we go to work, _we make love..._"

She was a subtle one, all right.

"I..._think I'll go to work now._" I said.

Queen Cupcake leapt to her feet, grinning ear to ear.

"Very well! I shall take you..._to your work._"

I rolled my eyes. "Why do I get the suspicion that `my work' involves the Royal Bed?"

Cupcake grinned. "So we're on the same page! Excellent!"

I cast Amanda a pleading look. "Help?"

She only shrugged.

"Can I watch?" Sneezer asked.

"Yes!" the queen said.

"No," I snapped. "This isn't happening."

I rose to my feet. "Thank you, Queen Cupcake. We appreciate your hospitality, but we really must be going."

"But your reward!" she cried. "I simply _must_ reward you!"

"Virtue is its own reward," I said. "Really."

And then I turned into my Drew Scout form.

"A scout does at least one good turn daily, without asking for benefits or rewards."

"You're not _seeking_ a reward," she said, poking my stomach. "You're _getting_ it."

The fact that I was temporarily small and underaged didn't seem to matter to her.

Officer Harris was right. I _was_ out of my depth.

I swallowed, hurrying to my sister's chair.

"C'mon, Amanda, Sneezer. Let's go find Dane and Riffraff and get out of here."

"But I want to watch bird sex!" Sneezer protested.

"I do too," said the queen. "That's why I have _lots of mirrors. _And a camera."

She took out a microphone, speaking into it. Her voice came out in booming echoes like before.

"Guards, please escort _our hero_ to the Royal Bed Chamber."

"No!" I shouted.

"I'm sorry," Amanda said. "Drew is right. You can't have him. He's taken."

She pointed at Sneezer, who gave me an unsettling grin.

"Oh, I'm _sure_ I can convince you to _change sides_, so to speak..."

"I'm not so sure about that, _Miss Poopy Pants_!" I said.

I tried to run up the stairs, but I found a pair of giant penguins, ducks in armor, and a roc blocking my passage. A couple goony looking vultures dressed like medieval serfs pushed me back down, brandishing their spears.

I tried to turn into Karate Rat, but my breathing technique only resulted in me changing into a robin. I supposed that even being female wouldn't have solved the problem, for she seemed rather indiscriminate about that in her Bird Oath.

"Look here," I said. "I just saved a bunch of you guys. Can't you cut me a break and let me leave?"

"_That would be ungrateful of us,_" said one of the owls I'd freed. "We simply _have to_ reward you!"

"I'm liking this less and less," I said.

Although I didn't quite agree with some of her methods, I was beginning to understand why Miss Terious did what she did with those birds.

"Let me go now!" I shouted. "Or I'll, I'll tell Miss Terious about this place and send her here to take you back!"

"_You wouldn't do that, master!_" Extra said. "You _love_ birds!"

And then I was looking at a sea of pouty bird faces.

"Yeah!" they all cried.

"You _really, really_ love birds," the owl said, adding insult to injury.

I winced.

When Amanda saw what was happening, she chortled through her nose. I guess she'd given up on the idea of sleeping with me, or something, or just found the idea amusing.

The vultures and ducks bullied me down a twig lined narrow passageway to one side of the banquet hall, and up a slanting ramp, to a set of iron double doors, throwing them open to reveal...a nest.

It looked like a queen bed with a canopy, but the bottom portion was like a robin's nest with a mattress stuffed into it.

The walls were all sparkly and reflective, mirrors from cars and other shiny stuff, with a real full length mirror on the round ceiling.

Sneezer, of course, was following me, looking all excited. I myself felt rather ill.

The guards pushed me through the threshold, and Cupcake slammed the doors shut behind us, sliding a metal bar across them, a bar that locked in place at both ends with padlocks.

She undid a few buttons on her dress, shrugged her shoulders, and it fell to the floor, leaving her standing there in a bra and a diaper.

Of course, I was back in my human state by now.

Sneezer pushed me forward. "Go get her, Drew!"


	50. Chapter 50: Master Blaster

Chad stared at the floating fat man, I guess not knowing what to think. My baby took one look at him and started crying until Chad turned around and bounced him in the carrier.

I giggled and waved at the mirror.

"Hello, Master Blaster," I said with a grin. "Or can I call you _Blasty_?"

Master Blaster scowled, his eyes traveling up and down my body in a not so subtle way. "Who is this, Miss Terious?"

"She's a lawbreaker," she said. "From the noid world."

The man rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "What laws did she break?"

Misty told him.

"How about you?" I asked. "What have _you_ been doing lately?"

He gave me this look that told me he did not appreciate this sudden familiarity from a complete stranger.

"I've..._heard so much about you,_" I explained. It would do me no good telling him he was on TV, of that I was sure. "Have you kidnapped any more musicians?"

Master Blaster looked offended, like doing such a thing was a dirty little secret.

"I meant no offense," I said. "I think it's really cool that you grab random rock guys and turn them into cartoons. I was just curious who you got after Kidd Video."

"Oh?" he said, looking rather pleased. "I doubt you've heard of most of them. But their music is excellent. Of course, over time I've discovered that `forever' is a little too long to have _any_ musical slave, so I've worked out a little slave exchange program with other slavemasters. Dilithium mines, magical crystal mines, seedy alien bars, brutal fights to the death, that kind of thing."

"Try me," I said. "I listen to a lot of music. Name a few bands. Or musicians or whatever."

Master Blaster cleared his throat. "Let's see...we've had Mindtrick, Crap Corps, Four Fried Chickens and a Coke...King Crimson...

"We've also had some long haired guys named Metallica, but they were a pain in the ass. _Kept trying to sue me_."

I giggled. "It's an honor to meet you, sir."

"The pleasure's all mine," he answered, and it probably was, considering the amount of staring I got.

"Where's your cats?" I said.

He frowned. "The last I checked, they were working on my newest acquisitions, Adam Sandler and Weird Al Yankovich. I admit I'm a bit skeptical, but I'm easily bored. Would you like to be my slave?"

I laughed. "I'm not really sure about _slave_, _per se..._"

I didn't want to go out and _say_ that I wasn't interested in him sexually, i.e. not interested in being a sex slave, but how to say this politely without stepping on any toes...

"How about we define the role as `_consultant_'," I suggested. "That way, nothing untoward is implied."

I could tell that didn't make the man very happy, but, frankly, I didn't think he deserved to be _that_ happy.

"Jessica here has volunteered to help retrieve the Spikes of Power," Misty said. "And you are one of the most powerful beings in Cool World. I thought perhaps we could _make an arrangement._"

"Mmmyes," said Sleez.

Personally, I thought there were plenty more powerful villains, like Skeletor or Mum-Rah, but I decided she was talking in terms of affecting reality.

"Come to my jukebox," he said, spreading his hands.

Our bodies were surrounded by glowing light, and then we were in a giant bubble, floating over a seemingly endless hilly green landscape painted to look like a grid, as if we flying across a topographic contour map.

I and Misty were alone in the bubble. Chad, the baby, and Sleez floated in their own separate bubble, my boyfriend looking at me uncomfortably.

The baby, on the other hand, was having a blast (no pun intended), grinning and bouncing in its harness as it waved its little fists and fingers at the green expanse.

I've still got to name that kid. Chad Jr.?

We drifted over hills and valleys to the tune of new age electronica.

We didn't have a sneezing fairy to rescue us, but we didn't want to be rescued anyway. I was delighted by the thought of experiencing exactly what people went through when no one breaks them out of Master Blaster's bubbles.

He still had that giant flying jukebox for his base of operations. Wurlitzer. The kind with the multicolored bubble tubes, and an actual turntable that played LP's instead of functioning as an expensive CD player.

Those vinyl records seemed to be the size of a small house. They must have been a pain to put in.

No rocket engines, propellers or hover machinery. I supposed it was suspended by _Good Vibrations, Mojo Risin'_ and _Get On Ups_.

The bubble took me down to that circle shaped embellishment on the lower portion of the crosshatch patterned speaker cover.

I dropped down a vertical tube, then I was inside the colorful lava lamp type thingy on the side of the machine.

The bubble stopped about halfway, its side opening to reveal a long tall corridor.

This tunnel was gold colored and spaceship-like, but its walls had been decorated like a Hard Rock Cafe, a plethora of musical paraphernalia and framed pictures.

I saw all kinds of people posing with Master Blaster. Huey Louis (I hoped he was being kept in a dungeon), Flipp (Ditto-I was trying to tape their performance at a parade one time and the singer mooned me as I was running out of tape), Marilyn Manson, Lady Gaga, Busta Rhymes...I saw members of Korn posing with Master Blaster's hands on their shoulders like he were a normal road manager, and Rob Zombie with the Copy Cats.

Aside from those and a few other notable exceptions, the guy mostly captured musicians who had at least temporarily faded from the limelight. Annie Lennox, Gloria Estefan, Tommy Twotone, Devo, Billy Thorpe, Chris De Burgh...

I suspected some of the faces on the wall had never been _in_ the limelight, but I supposed it was a moot point.

Misty tapped a framed picture of Humpty Hump. "Master Blaster likes to flaunt his acquisitions."

I grinned. "Sounds like a fun place."

Misty's lip twisted at the corner. "Perhaps not as much as you might think."

Hearing a chirping sound, she pulled pair of insect-like antennas out of her neck and held up a makeup mirror, which apparently served as her video phone. I could see a faceless blue man inside the little circle.

"Yes?" she said. Then she frowned. "_Drew Deebes beat up my staff._"

I chuckled, both at the thought of Drew beating up anyone, and of the comic book cliche of telling everyone the content of your call instead of keeping it to yourself.

"You say _he and his sister blew up the machines_? _All of them_? _And freed all the birds?_"

She clenched her hand in a fist, smashing a framed picture of Ed Sheeran.

She covered her mouth in embarrassment.

"It's okay," I said. "Nobody will miss it. _I know I wouldn't._"

Misty frowned, eying me with suspicion, but she didn't say anything to me.

"Send in Myxo!" she barked at the circle. "I don't care if he's a noid! I want him dead!"

She paused. "And _send in my sister Insectia_ to clean up whatever is left."

Misty put the phone away, scowling at me. "It's because of you that this is happening. If you hadn't pulled your..." She glanced at Chad. "_Ex_ boyfriend off that cutter, none of this would have happened!"

I shrugged. "I'm sorry, Misty. I seriously didn't know he would do that. I'm really shocked that he could even accomplish everything you described. I never thought he was that brilliant, to tell you the truth. Or that he had balls, for that matter.

"I'm really sorry he robbed you of your livelihood. If there's anything I can do to make up for it, I will."

She sighed and gave me a nod.

"Don't worry about it. If he's as dumb and cowardly as you say, Myxo should be able to take care of him."

"Cool beans," I said with a smirk. "By the way, what does Myxo mean? Is he like a killer chef or something?"

"It's short for a disease that blinds rabbits," Misty replied with a shrug. "_Myxomatosis_. He gets very upset when anyone calls him Mix Master or Drink Mixer, _anything mixer_, for that matter. I think the name causes him to feel inadequate, which makes his desire for death and bloodshed more acute."

I laughed. "I see!"

It was fascinating, like sitting in a booth at one of those neighborhood bar and grills. I would have kept staring at the pictures, but then I heard someone playing Boogie Woogie Wu, and a portly bouffant wearing cat dressed in a Sargent Pepper outfit started gesturing at a doorway with a sandwich, implying I should go that way...and maybe eat?

We marched down a long, winding and architecturally confusing corridor, arriving at a dark throne room with a high ceiling and gargoyles hanging over the rows of pillars leading to the dais.

I didn't see any other cat besides Fat Cat (who incidentally is no relation to that Dom DeLouise sounding guy in pinstripes on _Rescue Rangers_).

The floating fat man sat in his zero gravity throne, listening impatiently to...

The _actual members of Insane Clown Posse_, playing _Hokus Jokus._

Grinning like a fool, I snapped my fingers and danced as the two fat guys with the black makeup and spiky hair rapped and did their resampling thing, their makeup wearing drummer and technical support guy adding to the groove.

I liked their music, but I wasn't a groupie. Some of their songs smacked a little too much of misogyny for my taste. But others, _hey..._

Regardless of the sexism, it seemed they _did_ play with extra enthusiasm when I came in.

The rappers had blinking electronic collars around their necks, like prisoners in _Escape From L.A._, devices which, come to think of it, also appeared in all those photos I just examined.

I was indifferent about this, for, after going Platinum and buying a mansion in Beverly Hills, you had to be good humored about the bad things that come your way, and take your lumps. When _I_ cry over spilled milk, the milk doesn't come from my own personal farm of imported Sri Lankan donkeys.

The group performed on a raised platform, with a keyboard, drums and sound system that appeared to be Master Blaster's property, judging by the M.B. logo on the drum.

Chad smiled and danced with me a little. The baby, well, I'm not sure what he thought, exactly.

Misty's phone.._.ish thing_ rang again.

She listened for a moment, then screamed, "What!"

And she was glaring at me.

The music stopped.

My baby started crying. Chad tried his best to console him.

"Bitch is crazy," one of the clowns muttered.

I smiled nicely at Misty. "Is there a problem?"

"Problem!" she yelled. "Your ex just _beat my best soldier_!"

"I always suspected he was an asshole," I said. "Now, you said, _beat_. Does that literally mean he killed your Mixy guy, or...?"

Misty shook her head. "No, he got away. A little wounded, that's all."

"Anything I can do to help?"

"Yes," she said. "I need you to kill him."

I frowned. "Um...murdering someone in cold blood for destroying your building isn't exactly tit for tat." Mike E. Clarke was shouting something in disagreement, probably something about chopping Drew's head in half with an ax, but I ignored it. "Plus, I don't know where he is right now."

Misty sighed. "Then what do you suggest?"

"Me?" I said. "Well, deep within you is an Inner Bitch. I'm sure, with a little work, we can use this secret weapon to come up with something that will make him _wish_ that we just went out and killed him. All we need to do is a little _research_, and figure out how to hit him where it hurts."

"So...don't think like a villainess," she muttered. "Be..._evil_, and think like a psycho ex girlfriend."

"Bingo," I said. "Just like a Lifetime movie."

She became lost in thought.

"Of course, we should probably get the Spikes first," I said.

"Yes. Of course." Her answer seemed a bit noncommittal, though.

Whatever.

Master Blaster and the rappers were looking at us with annoyance.

Misty waved at them. "My apologies. _Continue._"

The music started back up. I decided not to waste the opportunity, and do some more dancing.

I danced backwards toward the throne, bumping into it as I listened to the end of the song.

When I spun around, I saw Master Blaster looking rather sour.

He made a little gesture with his right hand like a mafia don, and the band disappeared through a doorway.

Master Blaster cleared his throat. "Are we ready to discuss business?"

"We're going into the real world," Misty said. "And we require your assistance. Let's deal."

Master Blaster took a deep breath. "You want a deal? How about this? I'm weary of these bands I keep shuffling through here. I want some_ fresh talent_. You get me what I want, and I'll let you have access to all my mirrors."

"I thought you had _Copy Cats_ to carry out that task," I said.

He shook his head, rolling his eyes at me. "There are certain acquisitions that require a certain amount of..._finesse_. Finesse that these cats unfortunately do not have. Perhaps because they lack an understanding of your world...and the _World Wide Web_, whatever that thing is."

He handed Misty a little computer, which looked like the eighties' idea of what a handheld computer should be. Kind of the grandmother of an Android tablet, I guess, something without a streamlined shape or a touch screen.

She stared at the monitor, pushing buttons. "This is a little vague. I thought you wanted something specific."

"If I wanted specific, I'd use the Cats. I want to be surprised, but more than that, I want to be impressed."

Misty clicked a few more buttons. "These are _actors_. Why do you want them?"

Master Blaster shrugged. "I'm branching out. Of course, I _do_ want you to investigate a few things...such as whether Guns and Roses is getting back together, and Aerosmith's foray into country..."

"Actually," I blurted, but Misty shushed me. I guess it was better for the negotiation anyway.

That and the newly developed technologies that put any conceivable musician at your fingertips by means of the internet (musicians that play for you, any time of day, in concert, in the comfort of your own home). I decided to leave that one off the table, for added leverage.

"It's a deal, the villainess said.

"Very good."

Master Blaster pushed a button on his throne, and rows of full length mirrors emerged from secret compartments in the floor.

Intrigued, I wandered past one, examining what it `reflected.'

I was looking at an oddly familiar hotel bed, in a deluxe suite that could only be in the Union Plaza Hotel.

"You must be really bored," I stammered, somewhat relieved that I hadn't made use of that particular piece of furniture.

_"You have no idea."_

I looked at another, and found it to be someone's messy living room, a guy with lizards on his shirt smoking while trying to play guitar in time with a Ramones video.

"I suggest you visit Mirror 9 first. In addition to being the location of one of the Spikes of Power, I believe you can find items 38 and 103 in that general vicinity."

"This may be a stupid question," I said. "But how do you know all this?"

"I have sensors. And bumbling cat spies."

Misty led me to the appropriate mirror. I chuckled at what I saw when I looked in.

It was a concrete hallway, apparently underground, with rows of pipes and wires running along the ceiling. A sign reading `Space Mountain' had been painted on one wall, and the rattling of tracks could be heard.

A figure clad in a Mickey Mouse costume waddled down the corridor, removing its head to reveal the face of a dark haired cornpone of a woman.

The woman opened a secret compartment on one of the ears, taking out a package of cigarettes and a lighter.

I watched with amusement as the woman smoked and swore about something or another for a few minutes, then put out the cigarette, stuffing the contraband back inside the ear.

She donned the mouse head once more, hurriedly marching down an adjoining tunnel.

"_The Most Artificial Place On Earth!_" I giggled and danced with glee. "When can we start?"


	51. Chapter 51: Stool Pigeons

Drew

* * *

The bird with the poopy britches ran up to me, enveloping me in her wings, or arms, or whatever you call those limbs on a cartoon bird.

She frowned at my bandage.

"Oh honey! You're hurt!"

"I know," I said. "I really need to go and see a doctor."

She tried to remove the scarves.

"I'm human," I said. "Noid. I need a real human to treat these real wounds and not your..." I winced at the unintended pun. "_Quacks._"

For a moment, she looked offended, but she seemed to let it pass.

"Well. _At least it's bandaged._ Perhaps we can _work around_ the injury?"

"No," I said. "I'm in a lot of pain."

"He's not in _that much_ pain," Sneezer said.

Cupcake giggled. "Oh _you are a shy one_! No matter, I'm a little shy too. I think we can come to..._enjoy each other's company..._"

"I don't think so." I sighed. "Look. I was trying to be nice, but I guess you're too thick to get what I'm hinting at, so I'll just say it."

I cleared my throat. "You're disgusting. I'm not at all turned on by you wearing a diaper and shitting yourself. It's gross, even if the poop is animated. For that reason, I don't ever want to sleep with you. Don't get me wrong, you're cute, but unless you can get rid of that diaper, take a shower, and scrub that blue animated ass, I don't want it."

She sniffed, sobbed a few times, then started wailing, tears spraying out of her eyes like a fountain.

I just frowned and stared at her.

She sobbed once more, then it was like someone flipped the crying switch to the off position, and she looked indignant.

"Fine!"

But then she had an abrupt mood swing, looking hopeful. "How about we shower together?"

"No," I said.

"Fine!" she shouted once more.

Queen Cupcake stomped through a door at the back of the room, presumably the bathroom, slamming it shut behind her.

"That was mean," Sneezer said.

"I don't expect you to understand," I replied. "Before those floating guys messed with stuff, you were in diapers, too."

"Were?" Sneezer said with an evil grin.

I scowled. "Please tell me you stopped when you `got older.'"

Sneezer gave me a wink like he didn't, but then giggled. "Ha ha! I got you!"

I was not at all amused.

"_Drew_," he said. "I knew how much you didn't like that, so I stopped, okay?"

I didn't want to say what I thought about that, because I already knew my hormones were not to be trusted, and I didn't want him to have that information.

I dug in my pockets, hoping I could find something in there to get me out of this mess.

The first thing that came out of Hammer Space was a can of Reddi Wip, and a carrot.

Then I found I had a harmonica, a heavy iron gauntlet, a box of condoms, and an oversized wooden mallet.

"_Whatcha doin'?_" Sneezer said in a nasty tattling sort of tone.

"Sneezer," I said. "If you ever want to get kissed by rat girl again, I suggest you shut the hell up."

He swallowed hard and nodded.

Extra popped out of my shirt.

"Master-"

"You be quiet too, little buddy," I said. "Don't make me take you back to the Bird Store."

"But master-"

I sighed. "C'mon, Extra. Be a pal. I'll sleep with your queen some other time, when she _grows up._"

He nodded. "Yes, master."

I pulled out a yellow dinosaur innertube, an umbrella, a case of Turtle Wax and a can of spinach.

I seriously considered squeezing the can and eating the greens to see if it really made me strong, but even if I believed the misconception about an iron overdose making you strong, I didn't like `spinnich' that much. I dug around again, hoping to find something better.

After pulling out a `Lousyville Slugger' baseball bat, a tuba, and feathery thong underwear, I at last found something promising, a science fictiony laser pistol.

I aimed at one of the locks and fired.

The lock turned to powder and fell away.

I vaporized the other one similarly, threw aside the crossbar, and shoved the doors open.

The outer hallway, of course, was full of bird guards.

Having no better plan at the moment, I quickly grabbed the can of spinach and gave it a go.

It was a squeeze can. I guess they don't make aluminum like they used to.

The moment the spinach sprayed in my mouth, I heard the Popeye song and I turned into a big buff looking robin.

Handing the laser to Sneezer (how would it look if the guy that rescued all those birds went around vaporizing them afterwards?) I set about `biffing' and `boffing' anyone that got in my way.

"Drew!" Amanda cried as she stepped out of a doorway. "What's-"

"No time to explain," I said. "We need to find Dane and Riffraff and get out of here."

"How was it?" she said, looking more disappointed than I expected. "Was she good?"

I winced. "I don't know. We didn't do anything. I told her to take a shower."

She giggled, looking oddly relieved, joyous even.

"Oh," she said with false gloom. "_That's too bad._"

"Not really," I said.

"So you, um..." She ran a hand down her thigh, then cleared her throat. "_Well that's good._ I'm glad."

"Me too," said Sneezer. "_She_ promised to kiss me."

I rolled my eyes. "I..."

I just shook my head.

Extra flapped onto my head. "The dungeon is this way, master!"

A few feet past the guards, it seemed the birds hadn't gotten the memo.

Bird brains.

Of course, my costume had suddenly developed breasts, so that could have confused them, too. _It sure confused Extra_.

My winged guide led me _up_ a spiral staircase and down a winding bent twig tunnel.

"I thought you were going to lead me to the dungeon," I complained.

"I am, master," he said. "I am. We birds have different ideas about what constitutes a dungeon."

The tunnel ended on a ledge overlooking a large pit.

Directly across from me, I could see `the prison.'

It resembled an enormous bird cage, with a wide sort of gold sidewalk surrounding it. Within the bars, I could see kind of a living room. Sofa, bed, television, framed pictures, and a kitchenette.

A pair of burly looking pigeons stood guard around the gate, one of them peering at a copy of _Johnathan Livingston Seagull_, the other _Bird Fancy_.

It looked kind of easy to get in there and get out...if I could find a bridge to cross the chasm.

"How do we get out there, Extra?" I whispered.

My bird tugged on my wings.

"Good luck," Amanda said.

Sneezer, clad in (ironically) a _Cockatiel _suit, just gazed at my breasts. What did I ever see in that creep?

I stared into the pit, then frowned at my wings. "I'm going to die."

"Confidence, master," Extra said. "In Cool World, confidence transcends physics. Remember that."

I furrowed my brow. "Right. Because..._Wiley Coyote could have kept walking on air..._"

Shreve suddenly popped out of my costume. "Are we home? This doesn't look like home."

"It's the dungeon, dad," Extra said.

"Oh."

And then Shreve said, "Is this home? It doesn't look like it."

I rolled my eyes, thankful that his dementia hadn't shown up until now."

"I...must have..._fallen asleep_ in your blouse!" the old guy blurted.

With a sigh, I leaned over the edge, rubbing my hands together.

"Here goes nothing."

I jumped off the edge, flapping my arms.

I damn near broke my legs. My feet were about an inch from the bottom of the pit before my wings started working.

I'm not sure how I got there, but somehow I ended up flying with my head above the lip of the cage platform, singing the Flag Boy song and the theme to _Beretta_.

I caught hold of a bird perch sticking out of a short stair, peering up at the guards.

"This book is weird," said the one on the left. "The seagull...leaves home because nobody understands how he wants to fly really fast (as if they actually behaved like that), and now he's meeting, what, birds that travel into other dimensions? I don't get it."

"That's because you're not a seagull," said the other guard.

"I _don't know_. I spoke to _Robert_ about it, and he didn't get it, either."

"Robert doesn't get anything."

It didn't look like there were any other entrances or exits to this prison except at the front. I got a good look at the bottom as I was almost going splat, and there was only a perch on the front. I didn't even see plumbing, or a tray to change the newspaper with.

With a sigh, I pulled myself up on the perch, thankful I was in the habit of using machines at the Y that worked those same muscle groups.

...And that the can of spinach hadn't worn off yet.

Once up top, I crept up the stairs, glancing back and forth, waiting to be noticed.

The two just looked bored, beaks in their reading material. They gave me a passing glance, but that was it.

Sneezer flapped his wings, joining me on the steps.

I approached the wire door.

It was just your average bird cage door, a couple latches holding it shut. No locks at all. Of course, I supposed the chasm kind of made that unnecessary.

I unlatched the gate, marching into the cage.

They _did_ have an X-Box. Dane and Riffraff were seated on a green sofa, nuzzled cozily against each other as they played that game where a guy with a battery shaped head rolls everything in the entire world up into a giant ball.

"I think they got _Guitar Hero_," Dane said. "You heard of that one?"

The cat licked his teeth, fidgeting with the controller. "I almost got it to two meters. I just need to flatten this row of mice..."

Then he growled, "Stupid ramp!"

"You guys want to stay here a few weeks," I asked. "Or do you want to go now?"

Dane shook her head. "This place is cool, but not that cool."

But Riffraff muttered, "Just one more domino..."

Dane pushed the power button. "C'mon, Riffy."

"I told you, only Cleo calls me that."

"Would you prefer Garfield?"

Riffraff reddened. "No, but _you can't call me Riffy!_"

"Can we squabble later?" I said, pushing open the cage door.

I led my friends out to the staircase, staring across the gap. The guards paid us no mind, continuing to read.

"That's great," Dane said. "But how do we get over there?"

"You don't!" a voice shouted.

A second later, I see the queen, clad in a silky fur trimmed camisole, fur trimmed panties and stockings with garters and heels. She runs up to the ledge, accompanied by her seagulls and penguins and giant roc, who aren't very good at pretending not to ogle their ruler.

"...at least, not until we take care of a little _unfinished business_," she said.

Extra flew up to my ear. "I think she's showered, master."

"I'm sure she has," I groaned.

"I do not see a diaper," he added.

"I...noticed."

So. No really good option for me to choose. I could stay in the cage and play _Katamari Damancy_, eventually getting bird raped on the sofa, or I could fly down and let her have her way with me in the `nest.'

"Look, um," I stammered. "I admit you're _cute. Really cute_. But I'm not quite ready for this. You want to make me king? Fine. But give me some space. I barely know you. Let's go on a few dates or something. Get to know each other."

She blushed and nodded. "_Of course_. And you can _stay right here_ until you decide."

I rolled my eyes. "What part of `give me some space' do you not understand?"

"But," she said. "If I let you go, how do I know-"

"You don't," I answered. "But it's _normal._"

"Yeah," Riffraff said. "What's all this stuff about `_a little bird told me'_, if you can't figure something out?"

Cupcake frowned. "I'm sorry. I still can't let you leave."

"No good deed goes unpunished," I moaned.

I was screwed.

Or, _going to be_.

The birds flocked around us, dragging me, Dane and Riffraff back to the ledge.

One of the birds, a kiwi, said, "The king has released the prisoners, your highness! Do you wish for us to put them back?"

Cupcake shoved me into a wall, kissing me. I was a female bird, but she didn't care.

When she pulled her beak away, she said, "They were only joking, weren't you?"

"Yes, ma'am!" Riffraff cried.

"Yes," Dane agreed.

"Then, you two are free to go," Cupcake declared, then gave me some tongue.

In the meantime, Amanda was activating one of those _Inspector Gadget_ style videophone watches.

"Yes, daddy," she hissed at the screen. "We need H-E-L-P.! Whatever you got!"

She pointed the watch at me. "Isn't that right, Drew?"

I gave a thumbs up, but then, thinking about how it could be misinterpreted, I pulled away from Cupcake's beak and blurted, "Help!"

"Be there in just a few minutes," Dad said. I didn't know if that would be quick enough.

So...I decided to _distract_ the queen. I kind of made myself enjoy it, returning her kisses with a little more enthusiasm, reaching under the camisole and running my hands down her body. You know, to make it convincing.

Suddenly, I hear a sound like someone dragging a tennis shoe across a basketball court.

When I turned my head to look, I saw a floating pink koala bear in a dress drawing a hole in space with a tube of lipstick. Dad was behind her, wearing a ridiculous hat that looked like it belonged to a koala themed amusement park.

"Quick!" Amanda said, shoving Dane and Riffraff through the hole.

Sneezer, however, remained with me...to watch.

The koala stared at me and Cupcake in horror. "Oh! That is most improper!"

"It sure is," Sneezer said with a dreamy grin.

"I don't care how you do it," Amanda said. "Just get him out of here before he does something he regrets!"

"Okay!" the koala said in a you-asked-for-it tone of voice.

When Cupcake pressed me against the wall again, undoing the buckle on my real belt, I suddenly discovered that the wall wasn't there.

I tumbled backwards through a dark void, landing on a padded floor inside a room with bamboo screen walls.

With Cupcake on top of me.

That dumb koala bear.

I saw Amanda hop through the hole, landing next to me. Then Sneezer joined us.

"Thanks," I said to my sister.

Then I kissed Cupcake again.

"_You're free_," Amanda said.

I blushed. "Yeah."

I pushed the bird off me, getting to my feet.

Before I could reach the door, she took me down with a football tackle, kissing me as she worked on removing my clothing.

Dane looked in and laughed at me. Riffraff stared.

Dad, seeing what was happening, just shook his head and slid the door shut.

Parent of the year.


	52. Chapter 52: Shadow Realm World

I pulled my lips away from Cupcake's beak. "You're really weird."

"I know," she said, kissing me some more.

I pushed her back. "Tell me something. What is it with the diapers? I'm almost a hundred percent positive that nobody else in Cool World does that."

She rolled her eyes. "Seriously? I work in a _baby factory_. I'm surrounded, all day, _by baby stuff_. And you ask me why?"

I stared at her. "Yeah. _Why._"

"I don't know. _It feels good._ And maybe I was riding in a helicopter with a noid lady that gave me the idea."

"Jessica," I groaned, slapping my face.

She gawked at me. "You know her?"

"Uh...kinda?"

The bird narrowed her eyes. "How much is kinda."

"We're _boyfriend and girlfriend_," I said, latching onto the negative vibe. "_We slept together_. Which is why you and me isn't such a good idea."

"Why," she said, reaching under my shirt. "Because she might get jealous?"

"Yeah," I said. "She can get pretty crazy when she's upset."

She kissed me, sliding her hand over my chest. "So can I."

Suddenly, I see a flash, and I'm looking up at a skeleton bird surrounded by lightning bolts. She turned back to normal and rolled off me, going into convulsions.

I, on the other hand, was unaffected. I guess animators never attempted touching someone with their hand on a low voltage electric fence.

I looked up and saw Amanda with a taser in her hand. "I get crazier."

"Uh..._thanks_," I said, blushing with embarrassment.

This was awkward because, for one, although I didn't want to admit it, I had been enjoying myself before she interrupted me, and two, Amanda had basically claimed me as her boyfriend, when I had been trying so hard to convince her it wasn't right.

Okay, so that may be an overstatement, but I _did_ try.

At any rate, I guess it's better to stick with the creep you know rather than the one you just barely met.

"Can you tie her up, or something?" I asked.

She frowned, apparently thinking I meant to do some bondage roleplay or something, judging by the face she was making.

"No, no," I said. "Her hands are too _busy._ I just want her to..._keep them to herself for awhile_."

Amanda nodded in approval. "How about I throw her into the Shadow Realm?"

I blinked at her in confusion. "You can do that?"

She just shrugged.

"Speaking of which, how did you get that koala bear, Pinky Nozzle, whatever, with the magic lipstick?"

"It's _Noozle_," she said. "Dad does stuff for doodles. Draws things. So he can occasionally pull favors. I really don't know what he did for Pinky, but, well, she owes him. I doubt we'll be so lucky in the future."

Amanda slid open a panel on one of the bamboo walls, taking out something that looked suspiciously like Wonder Woman's lasso. She tied this around the bird, throwing her over her shoulder.

I followed her out the door, and down to the den with all the bookshelves.

Dad was curled up with Chori on the sofa, reading aloud from _Four Past Midnight_. The pink Nozzle sat on the couch across from him, sipping tea.

_The Library Policeman_ is a pretty disturbing short story, but I guess whatever floats your boat.

Dane sat next to the koala, with Riffraff in her lap. Both looked a little bored. Dane puffed on a cartoon cigarette, then frowned at it. She made no comment, so I guessed she was well aware that many things in Cool World had no flavor.

When the two saw us enter the room, they got up and joined us.

Amanda grabbed the spine of one of those _I Am Number Four_ books, and the entire bookshelf turned into cardboard and slid behind the one next to it.

"Cool," Dane said.

"I'm going to use the Portal to the Shadow Realm," Amanda announced.

Dad didn't look up from the book. I guess being in a cartoon world makes you jaded to such things. "Okay, honey. Just make sure you close it when you're through. _You know how I hate surprises_."

The secret passage led to a spiral staircase, then a dungeon.

In one corner of this dungeon, I saw a small scale version of Stonehenge, with some comic style embellishments, like giant skulls, crystals and magical symbols.

"Awesome," said Dane as she stared at the place.

Drawn across a circle in the middle of all this was a Star of David.

I rolled my eyes and shook my head. "Why does every Japanese cartoon use that as their magical witchcraft symbol?"

"I'm not sure," Amanda said. "But dad thought a pentagram would be too creepy to have in his basement, and it works just as well."

I nodded. "_Makes sense._"

For the record, my dad has no religious affiliation whatsoever. This was merely an artistic decision.

"It's also on every Chinese Checker board," Dane added.

At this point, the taser effect had worn off, but Cupcake was still bound in the Wonder Lasso, so she couldn't do anything but yell at us.

Amanda tossed the bird into the circle, then raised her hands, wiggling her fingers as she said,

"Forces of darkness,

Let power be unfurled,

Open the door to the Shadow World!"

Nothing happen.

"I thought you said it was the shadow _realm_," I commented.

"It's harder to come up with a rhyme for realm."

She tried it again.

No portal.

She gave me an apologetic smile. "_Drew..._"

I frowned, not getting what she was asking for. "I understand she _may be_ a virgin, but wouldn't that kind of thing be counterproductive?"

"Not at all!" Cupcake said with a mischievous grin. She wiggled into a provocative pose, dropping her voice to a low breathy tone. "_I'm all yours._"

I should have had her gagged.

Amanda scowled at me, turning a little red. "I meant _the spell_! I'm a noid, so it won't work for me."

I blushed. "Right. _The spell._"

Sighing, I raised my hands and said the poem.

Immediately, green fire erupted from my hands, and a swirling black hole opened up inside the circle.

The bird screamed as she spun around in the hole like a schooner caught in a whirlpool.

Riffraff and Sneezer recoiled in horror. Extra got so afraid that he flew to Sneezer, burrowing into his jacket.

Noticing the hole getting bigger, I said, "How do you close it?"

Amanda cleared her throat.

"Powers of darkness,

Please go away,

We don't need the portal,

We're really okay."

"Seriously?" I said. "That's the spell?"

She gave me a nod.

"It sounds more like someone declining an extra helping of stuffing at a Thanksgiving dinner."

"I've heard worse on _He-Man_," Dane said.

"All right," I said. "Fine."

I repeated the `magic spell' and the floor returned to normal, sans Cupcake.

I sighed in relief, maybe a little disappointment.

"What wasn't very nice, Master," Extra said. "You should have not done that to our queen."

"It's not as bad as all that," said Amanda. "She'll be back. Doodles always come back. Sure, they might be a little _changed_ from the experience, but that's not necessarily _bad._"

"Have _you_ been there?" I asked.

She nodded. "_Briefly._ I also, um, threw _Judge Mxyo_ down there one time."

I swallowed. "Out of curiosity, was he cute and fluffy before you did that?"

Amanda winced. "Kind of?"

I shook my head. "Great. Now I have an arch nemesis of my own."

"Not necessarily," she said. "It depends on how she spends her time, and if she can find a portal back."

I groaned. "Well, I guess _that's that_. I suppose it's time to go back to the junkyard."

"I've been waiting _all day_ for you to say that!" Riffraff exclaimed.

We returned to the living room. Dad was still reading. I suspected maybe this was payment for Pinky's services.

Looking up from the book, he turned to Amanda and said, "Sugar, where's the Owlmobile?"

"It's behind C.C. Knicknocker," she said. "Uh, _it broke down._"

"I'm not moving that," the koala said.

Dad shook his head. "Don't bother. I'll get Chori or someone else to take me up there later. It's got a broken power steering line anyway."

We took Chips back to the junkyard.

I had to be there, because I was the slave.

Riffraff had to be there, because it's his home.

Since Dane had become quite attached to the cat, she came with us.

Sneezer basically went wherever I went.

The birds, well, I guess I was a walking nest.

Amanda didn't really have a reason to join us, but I suppose she just felt left out.

"Oh Riffy!" Cleo cried as we climbed inside that broken airplane the cats called home. "Where were you?"

"It's a long story, babe," Riffraff said. "I'll tell you all about it later."

She frowned. "Who's the noid?"

Since her and I had already met, and I wasn't human at the moment, I glanced at Dane.

Riffraff, I guess, didn't get it, pointing to my sister instead. "Cleo, you remember Amanda, don't you?"

She nodded to her. "_I'm very happy for you_. I know you always wanted to be human. _You look nice_."

"Thank you," Amanda grinned.

"I was actually asking about the other one."

I guess my sister hadn't taken Dane _everywhere_ in my absence.

Riffraff poked the other noid's leg. "Cleo, I'd like you to meet _Dane_. She's, uh, _been helping us_."

Dane, who had been staring wide eyed at everything, eagerly grabbed Cleo's paw and shook it a couple times. "Nice to meet you, Mrs. Riffraff!"

Cleo gasped in shock, staring at the other cat. "Mrs?"

Riffraff's hair stood up all over his body, to the point where he resembled a brush.

"Um...er...I mean..."

_"Oh Riffy!" _Cleo picked him up, squeezing him to her chest. "All this time, you wanted to propose and you were just too scared I'd say no!"

"Uh...yeah," he gasped. "That's _exactly what happened_."

She winked at Dane. "_I see what he means by helper!_"

Cleo let go of him, gazing into his eyes as she held his paw.

"I've been waiting forever for this moment. I kept thinking, `maybe if I drop a few more obvious hints, he might finally get the idea'..."

Riffraff swallowed. "Better late than never, Cleo!"

She smiled. "You must have been so afraid, because that one time we went steady, it never worked out. But you know as well as I that we have always been steady. It's really about time for us to make it official."

I could see cartoon sweat popping out from the other cat's head.

Cleo stroked his hand, grinning. "So where's my ring?"

Riffraff's eyes bulged in surprise. "Just...just a second."

He dashed out of the room, coming back with a diamond studded cat collar.

"I was originally thinking about giving this to you on your birthday, but..."

He fastened it around her neck, ushering his fiancee over to a mirror.

"I know it's not a ring, but..."

"Oh Riffy!" she cried. "It's beautiful!" and she kissed him.

When their lips pulled apart, Cleo took one look at her reflection and gasped.

"Riffy, why is there a giant golf ball in the mirror?"

"Golf ball?" I and Riffraff said in unison.

I squinted at the glass, puzzled by what I saw.

It wasn't a golf ball. It was Epcot Center.

Not an animated version of Epcot. The real deal, complete with the monorail and the huge mob of people practically crushing each other to death to go into shops, rides, and the toilet.

I saw a couple costumed figures in the square, Minnie Mouse and Goofy. I assumed an old joke provided the explanation for Mickey's absence.

"What the hell!" I said, poking at the glass.

Magic mirror or not, my finger did not go through. Even when it was animated.

"Why is it showing Disneyland?"

Dane peered over my shoulder at it. "More importantly, who's that weird cartoon chick with the hostage?"

I frowned. "What?"


	53. Chapter 53: Disney Magic

Dane tapped on the corner of the glass, pointing to an image of Jessica, still clad in her Vampirella costume. With her was a young blonde woman, her hands bound in extension cords.

"That lady that's tied up...she looks..._oddly familiar..._" Dane said. "_It's on the tip of my tongue._"

"Yeah," I said. "Actually, I think that's her _slogan_."

"She looks like she's in trouble," Cleo said with alarm.

I shook my head and smiled. "_Probably_. But if we leave her alone, I think it'll improve the quality of her music."

Cleo scowled at me.

"What," I said. "I've learned my lesson about being a hero. No good deed goes unpunished." Then, to placate her, I added, "This isn't a magic portal. It's a _mirror_. Plus, my ex girlfriend - Let's say I'm kind of skeptical."

Riffraff clapped his paws, rubbing them together. "All right, _slave_. What's for supper?"

* * *

Jessica

* * *

I raised my hand to Master Blaster's mirror, touching my fingers to the `reflection.'

As I expected, they went right through.

"Wait," Misty said. "We need equipment."

MB clapped his hands, and Fat Cat, despite his obesity, darted out of the room like the Road Runner, leaving a cloud shaped like himself behind. He returned a second later with a black bag, the kind doctors carry around.

"Thank you," Misty said, taking it. "But I need some special tools of my own."

She turned to face her boyfriend. "Sleez?"

The butler had been rather quiet since his bubble had arrived at Master Blaster's place. Of course, he never was much on conversation. "Mmyes?"

"Could you fetch my things, honey?"

Sleezington grinned, probably because he wasn't being talked to like a butler. "Yes, ma'am."

He zipped out of the room.

"Soy Lecithin," Misty said to me with a smile.

I stared at her. "Excuse me?"

"You haven't named your baby yet. I just thought..."

I laughed. "No. I don't think so."

"Moon Unit," she said.

I shook my head no.

"Freedom?"

I sighed. "Actually, I was leaning towards `Isosceles.'"

"What a wonderful name!" she exclaimed.

"_Isosceles?_" Chad repeated, looking a bit unsettled.

I nodded. "We're just talking. What do you think? Founding father of mathematics, philosopher..."

His ears drooped. "I was thinking we could maybe call him Chip."

"There's already a chipmunk with that name," I said. "Plus, if I need to shout at him for being a brat, you two will get confused."

He frowned. "I didn't think about that."

I opened my mouth to say something, but he spoke first. "One of my dearest and closest friends was named Chip. The man was fatally injured on the day the Asgarth attacked Duckberg. As he lay dying under a pile of debris, he spoke to me his last words.

"He said, `Chad, promise to me something. Promise that you will name your firstborn son after me. But use my Shi'ar tribal name, _Owamu Alawamia_.

"He also made me promise to marry his unsightly girlfriend and raise his children." He frowned. "Let's just call him Isosceles."

Sleez swooped back in with a giant bug thing. It looked like a cockroach with a luggage handle for an antenna.

"Christmas gift from my sister," Misty explained. "It's really well made."

She cracked open the bug's shell, showing me a wide assortment of tools and weaponry mired in gooey bug intestines.

She pulled out something that looked like a hair drier, pointing it at me.

"It's called an `Icer.' We can use this to immobilize targets."

"Can it also style my hair?" I asked with a smirk.

She stared at me. "Have you been talking to my sister?"

I shook my head.

Misty slammed the bug shut, offering me the handle.

Shrugging, I delegated the task to Chad. "Can we go now?"

Misty grabbed Master Blaster's tablet computer. "Yes. Let's go. And I want you to answer a few questions as we do."

I swallowed. "Agreed, but I reserve the right to not answer if it gets too personal."

Misty didn't look too happy about that, but didn't argue.

We marched through the mirror.

The place on the other side was sort of like an access tunnel beneath Hoover Dam, except with noise pollution. A long concrete tube, branching off several yards down the line.

I would have hoped that employees got to be exempt from hearing show tunes 24-7, but, in addition to the muffled garbage being pumped into the tourists up top, a pair of Mickey shaped speakers barfed out the theme song to _Toy Story_, interrupted at the halfway point by the following announcement:

"Are you merely a _Disney staff member_, or are you _doing all you can to make this the happiest place on earth?_ Look in the mirror and ask yourself: Have I delivered a smile today? Check your smile at the nearest Staff Smile Station."

I heard another minute of _You've Got A Friend In Me_, then:

"Before you swear, ask yourself, are children listening?..._Mickey knows_. Each occurrence will be deducted from your regular paycheck. You have been warned."

I always suspected Disneyland was a self governed entity, complete with courts, law enforcement, and an abridged form of the Constitution. Recordings like this proved my initial assumption that they intended to secede from the Union and become their own country.

I sighed. "Do you have a gun?"

Misty pulled one out of the cockroach, blowing Mickey to pieces.

The noise didn't stop. Now they were playing _Be Our Guest_.

Looking up, I saw a second Mickey head a yard down, and another past that, and another, for what looked like miles.

I was thankful that _Everything Is Awesome_ was not yet a Disney property. I would have blown my brains out.

Donald was watching us from the wall. His beak moved towards us, slowly nodding up and down, I guess to get a good look.

I gave him the finger.

Misty shot him. Glass, plastic and sparking wires showered down from the mounting bracket.

"Where's this spike located?" I asked.

Misty pushed some buttons on the computer, then frowned. "It's below something called Epcot, on the Merry Mausoleum level."

I giggled. "Merry Mausoleum?"

She shrugged. "I'm just reading from the screen. Your guess is as good as mine."

Strange to see a cartoon character who didn't know anything about Disney. I suppose it makes sense, though. The average American doesn't know who James Madison is. (I'd say George Washington, but there were pioneers in the field of comics and animation before Walt came up with his mouse).

"Okay," I said. "Which way?"

She consulted the screen. "You should go straight down this tunnel, and turn right a mile down."

Oh. Before anyone actually takes out a map and a ruler, keep in mind that I'm typing this on a cel phone, after all this stuff happened, and even if I have remembered it all correctly, I was never very good with numbers.

Sorry to disappoint anyone who can tell me the exact distance in centimeters between Captain Pickard's bedroom, Spot's litter box, and the length of their tiny penis.

Anyways, we walked.

And walked.

"So," Misty said. "You said I needed to _research_, in order to _unleash my Inner Bitch_. You, being the girlfriend..._ex girlfriend, _should be the foremost authority on the subject. Am I correct?"

I shrugged. "I've been stalking him, off and on, for about a decade, so I guess you could say that."

"So...what makes him hurt the most? What really gets under his skin?"

I stopped walking. "One word. _Money._"

She froze, staring at me. "I don't understand."

"He's a tax guy. He never misses a day of work. I'm pretty sure his car is paid off, and I think he didn't want to sleep with me because he saw me as a gold digger. The guy obsesses about money. If you want to hit him where it hurts, attack his wallet."

After walking a little further, I added, as an afterthought, "Just don't tell him it was my idea, okay? I still think he's..."

I cast a nervous glance at Chad.

"...A _good American citizen._"

Chad smiled and nodded, possibly because he wasn't as bright as I originally thought.

Hearing a strange noise a quarter mile down, I stopped to investigate.

The sound was coming from a machine shop. Some sort of tool room for the repair of animatronic things and their displays. It looked like a morgue for dismembered Disney characters.

It was a young little thing in a tiny pink jacket and silver shorts. I heard noises coming out of those surgically perfect lips, noises that could possibly be construed as music.

"I crack my panties for you..." she sang as she poured cherry syrup on a circular saw blade. "Oh baby..."

She licked the flat harmless side of the blade. "I crack my panties for _you._.."

I kept waiting for her to lick the teeth, but she apparently did have some sort of self preservation instinct inside that walnut sized brain of hers.

"Who is this, Ms. Buckthorn?" Misty whispered.

"This is Fanny Fontana," I said. "She performs a sideshow act."

Misty checked her computer, then whipped out the hair drier.

Miley was pouring Hershey's Chocolate on a Black and Decker hand drill when she collapsed on the floor with an ice mark on the back of her blonde head.

"Sideshow act," Misty announced. "_Check_."

We tied Miley up in extension cord.

Hearing the chirp of one of those cel phone walkie talkies, I popped my head out the doorway and saw a group of security guards with mouse insignia uniforms stomping down the corridor.

"We'd better get out of here, Misty."

"We have _weapons_, Ms. Buckthorn."

"Perhaps," I said. "But stealth is less expensive."

Misty put one hand on her hip. "What do you suggest?"

"Hide."

I pulled Chad and the baby behind a work table surrounded by decapitated plastic Disney characters, along the back wall.

"Psst!" Misty said, pointing to a generic cartoony backdrop designed for showcasing automatons.

A second later, she, Sleez and our equipment were two dimensional. I tried to climb in and take Chad with me, but my boyfriend kept falling back out.

The security team, hearing the commotion, stopped by the room, looking in.

A headless Ratatouille toppled over, giving away our position. They stormed through the door to investigate.

An overweight Samoan woman, a muscular black guy with pink lipstick and mascara, and a narrow redhead woman with a butch haircut.

By the time they entered the room, I had Chad and the baby stuffed inside Baloo from _The Jungle Book, _and I...

...I almost made it to the backdrop.

At first, they just stared at me, crouched behind the work table.

I stood up and started singing _Moon of Alabama_ at the top of my lungs, kind of a song and dance number, except I really hadn't rehearsed.

Oh, and I licked the chocolate off the drill, to maybe, possibly convince them I was someone else. We had, in fact, hidden Miley under a big plastic Gay Pride banner, so...

The routine worked for a moment, but then the guards stepped aside and I saw _Mickey_.

As in, _the real Mickey Mouse_.

Not a woman in costume.

_He was actually animated._

The mouse pulled out some sort of laser pistol, pointing it at me.

"You will accompany us to DPD Headquarters. Failure to comply will result in your execution."

I picked up Goofy's severed leg, waving it around like a ball bat. "You don't scare me. If a doodle kills me, I'll become a hundred percent doodle forever."

"_I think not._"

Mickey clicked something on his laser gun. To arm it, I suppose.

"This weapon will erase any doodle I point at. And one of these guards is carrying a very real handgun. Between the two, I think I'll be able to redecorate the walls with brains, or _something_, if you fail to cooperate."


	54. Chapter 54: Survey Monkey

Drew

* * *

They never really showed the cats' kitchen on _Heathcliff_. Food was either stolen or just magically materialized. Sometimes they went out or barbecued, but that was a rarity. I think they mainly ate cold pre-cooked chicken from the fridge or something. Cleo was a modern girl, and Riffraff and the gang were slobs.

That's why, when Riffraff asked me to cook, I assumed he was joking.

They actually had a kitchen. It was one of those ugly old silver camper trailers. You know, the cramped little round kind with the corrugated exterior and the fold out awning. It had a handful of cabinets, a counter, a stove and a little sink. The windows were all open, and I could see ripped mosquito netting through the frame.

Their stove looked like the propane type, but it acted like natural gas. I didn't even see a can.

I didn't have that much material to work with. Ham, chicken, eggs, fish. I guess I almost could make fish batter, if I mixed bits of fried chicken with the eggs, but that would have been a waste of chicken.

I checked the cabinets, though my expectations were low. I suspected I would have to go back to Dinosaucers to get real groceries.

The first cabinet I checked was empty.

The second...was like a scene from _The Twilight Zone_. A scary monkey's face appeared inside the door, shrieking at me. He hit me in the head with a box of corn flakes when I was shutting the door.

Bingo! Crumbled cereal, eggs, fish. I even found some pepper in another cabinet, plus the necessary pans and cooking implements.

Being animated, it all looked perfect when I mixed the stuff and breaded the fish. It probably would have looked even better if I knew how to draw.

As I was checking another cabinet, Cleo stepped into the room, smirking at me.

I was Bird Woman, so it wasn't as awkward as it could have been.

"You know how to cook?"

I shrugged. "Well enough."

"You look good as a French maid."

I looked down, and decided it was just girl talk. "Uh, _thanks_."

I glanced at her sparkly collar. "Congratulations, by the way. I'm sure it was as much a surprise to you as it was to him."

She grinned. "What are you talking about?"

I just rolled my eyes. "Never mind."

She sashayed out.

Amanda joined me in the trailer as I was baking.

She peeled back my bandage. "Feel any better?"

"Not really," I said. "About the same, actually."

She frowned. "I guess I can go look for some thread and sew it up, or I could get you a doctor..."

"No doctor, please."

I sighed, unsure if thread were all I needed to do to get fixed up.

"_Drew..._" she said.

I furrowed my brow. What does she want now? I thought.

Alternately, what bad news do you have for me?

"Yeah...?"

"Did you really sleep with that noid girl?" she asked.

I swallowed. I guess I could have lied and said yes, since it might have changed her mind about sleeping with me, but _I didn't really know if that would be enough to convince her_...I guess. So I said, "We came close, but we didn't...do anything."

She smiled. "So I'm your first."

That made me cringe. "Technically. I suppose."

She didn't get it. "You mean there were others?"

I sighed. "No, Amanda. _You were my first_. I'm just _ashamed_ because it's freaking _incest_!"

She just giggled and checked the oven. "_Looks delicious!_"

"Yeah," I said. "I just kind of threw it together."

"Why didn't you just use the Magic Box?"

"The what?" I said.

She opened a cabinet under the counter, showing me a black box with no label. The lid looked like something from a pepper container.

She sprinkled it on a piece of fish I'd set aside for the next batch, and immediately it was coated with white powder that appeared to be loaded with all sorts of delicious seasoning. Vegetables also materialized out of thin air to give the item a gourmet look.

"Now that's just lazy," I said.

"Maybe," she said, sprinkling the fish in the oven. "But all the chefs in Cool World use it."

"What about Ratatouille? I thought I saw actual cooking in that movie."

"I've seen him perform. It's a stage trick. He secretly puts powder from the box in his ingredient containers."

Then she smirked. "I never thought of using eggs and corn flakes."

"As a bachelor," I said. "You either go broke eating out all the time, or you learn to cook."

"Or you _sleep with a cook_," Sneezer said as he entered the room.

I rolled my eyes.

The mouse gazed at me with hearts popping out of his body. "I've been watching you from the door," he said. "You've been a rat this whole time."

It was true. I guess the feminine side of my personality was really in its element, or something.

I guess that was also why I kept looking at _him_.

"I saw how you were kissing that bird, and _touching_ her. Why didn't you just go through with it? Why did you have to send her into the Shadow Realm?"

"I..." I stammered.

"Would it have really been that bad?"

"I don't know," I said. "The baby play thing is a turn off, and I'm thinking, if we got into a relationship, she'd let her hair down, or _her diaper_, to be more accurate."

"But didn't you want it removed?"

I sighed. "Tee hee. What I meant was, she'd go back to her old ways."

"Then how about _us_?" he said with a grin.

I found myself blushing. "Look, uh, this isn't a good time. Let's do the date thing tomorrow or the day after and talk about it then."

"I like the sound of that!" Sneezer said cheerfully.

"You're going to burn your food," Amanda said, grabbing some hot pads.

The fish she pulled out of the oven looked like a painting, maybe even a painting on a box of fish batter, the older type that doesn't use photographs of glue coated plastic food that's supposed to be what your actual end product would look like.

"Do you know if Holli has found a cure yet?" I asked.

She set the fish on the counter. "The last time I checked, she's still working on it."

I put the fish on a plate, which magically garnished itself with a slice of lemon and sprig of parsley.

Why am I doing this? I asked myself.

I originally agreed to the slave bit to impress Amanda, because I didn't know she was my sister, and I wanted to sleep with her.

Being that she's my sister, I really have no business sleeping with her, and so it would be better for both of us if we never touched each other again. I.e., I should make it a point to become less sexy, more loathsome, more rude, more disrespectful, etcetera.

Furthermore, the cat probably cheated on the game.

So why bother with working for this douche?

Of course, I reconsidered, that douche _did_ kind of save my life, and help Extra.

I decided to try it a few days, and see if it's really as bad as all that. The cooking part was a cinch, so maybe the rest would be too?

I heard a weird grinding sound, and then a skinny guy in pinstripes with Buddy Holly glasses and stylishly swirled hair approached me. "Did someone call for a Doctor?"

I furrowed my brow. "Uh, _yeah_. You see, this evil rabbit threw a sharp pointy thing at my chest, and I wanted someone to take a look at it..."

"All right," he said. "Let's take a look at it, shall we?"

"Okay." And I removed the bandage.

The stranger sucked in his breath through his teeth. "By jove, that _is_ nasty, innit?"

The man gave me an embarrassed smile. "Blimey. You need a _doctor _doctor.. _Not quite qualified for that one!_"

And he dashed inside a blue London police box.

The box faded from sight with a wheezing grinding noise, presumably going off to Metabolife 3 or whatever place the guy normally goes to.

Wacky cameos. Par for the course around here, I thought as I re-bandaged myself. At least animated bindings didn't get dirty.

I found the cat reclining on a chaise lounge, clad in pharaoh's garb.

I brought him the plate. "Uh, your dinner, your majesty."

You kind of had to have a sense of humor about these things.

"Very good, slave," he said in a haughty tone. "Now fan me with a giant palm leaf and/or feather."

I rolled my eyes. "And where would that be located?"

Riffraff pointed behind his recliner, so I fanned him with a giant palm leaf. "Don't you have a bicycle that fans when you pedal?"

"_I suppose I do_," he said. "But this is much more slave-like, don't you think?"

"Maybe," I said. "But pedal power can generate electricity if you rig up the right type of equipment. Also, I'd be getting a better workout."

"_I don't know about that_," he said. "Your upper body seems a bit _slight_ to me."

"Whatever," I groaned, waving the palm.

"So..." Riffraff said in between bites of fish. "Remind me again. What do you do for a living?"

Funny you should ask me a question like that, I thought, when you never actually had a job yourself. "I'm a tax guy."

"_That's great_," he said sarcastically. "I'm glad I'll have have to make use of _those_ particular services."

"Don't be so sure," I said. "We're buying your car. If this place operates even remotely like the real world, you're going to end up paying property tax."

"Explain this whole car buying process to me. I don't remember hearing about this stuff before. How does it work?"

"Theoretically," I said. "_In the real world..._"

I told him how a car loan worked, with monthly installments, and repo trucks if you fail to pay. Then about the title, the tags, the insurance, and the yearly vehicle ownership tax.

"That sounds like a royal pain!" he said. I supposed it was a pun, but I ignored it.

"The government is good at punishing people for living," I said. "It's just a fact of life."

He frowned. "So how are you going to pay all this?"

I sighed and shook my head. "I think I'm going to need a job. Technically, a _second job._"

"I see," Cat Pharaoh said. "Because your first job is slave."

I smacked my head. "Actually, I was referring to H and R Block, but yeah, I guess that would make it a _third job_."

"And how do you intend to do that?"

"I saw a couple places in the paper," I said. "I'm not sure they pay the type of currency I need, but I can check."

"Are there any contests?" he asked. "You could pay the car off a lot quicker if you found a good contest."

I groaned. "I want a guaranteed paycheck. I don't want to go on a wacky adventure."

"Why not?" said a voice from the doorway. "I love wacky adventures!"

It was the brown cat, back from...wherever it was.

"Good for you," I said. "But if my life gets any wackier, they'll have to lock me in a padded cell with Daffy Duck. No thanks, I'll take a nine to five job."

"Nine to five?" Riffraff said with suspicion. "What about your slave duties?"

"I can work evenings if you want. But we're looking at eight hours per day."

"But what about your slave job?" he cried.

"There's been a slight revision in our contract," I said without the slightest bit of mirth. "Plus it's technically your car, so it'll still be part of the deal."

The way I figured, I was bending too far backwards with this slave business. If George Jefferson can have a lazy maid like Florence, I could give Riffraff _a little less than what was expected_. I'd do a good job, _if it suited me_.

In between the cheating, and Amanda being my sister, I figured I owed him at least half that much. Or should I say..._little?_

"Duh, is more fish in your contract?" Mongo said from behind Hector.

Riffraff gave me a questioning look.

I gave him a "whatever" face.

He clapped his paws, and off I went.

"Make that six fishes," Hector called. "One for me and Wordsworth, and five for Mongo."

It wasn't as difficult as it sounded. I probably could have opened my own restaurant in that place, making money and avoiding future problems.

If only I knew.

Amanda soon lost interest. "I'm going back to the apartment."

"Are you sure?" I asked. "You were gung ho on this slavery business from the get-go. Don't you want to..._observe_?"

"I don't know," she said. "I originally had this idea of you coming home from a hard day of slavery, and sleeping with me. Maybe every day. I'd drop by periodically, just to see how hard you were working...I really hadn't planned to stand around all day while you played waitress."

"I thought you liked me," I said.

She looked pained. "_I do_, Drew. I do. But, _you know_, you're different after you found out we're related. You're exploring your feminine side."

"I wouldn't have kissed Sneezer if you hadn't told me to," I said.

She reddened. "_I know._ I mean, _that's fine_, in fact, _it kind of makes me hot_, but, well, _you're not even_ _that close to him_ at this point. So why am I hanging around so much? Don't get me wrong, I'll still be there for you, like a sister..."

I nodded. "I'm boring. Got it."

Still, she kissed me on the mouth.

"Call me when you're done for the day. My bed is still available."

I reddened. Good idea or not, I didn't know where else I'd be sleeping that night. "I'll...do that."

Amanda put her Inspector Gadget watch on my wrist. "Button one gets Chips. Two is my apartment. Three is mom, and four is dad."

I squinted at the device. "There's nine buttons. What do the other five do?"

"I wouldn't touch them," she said.

"Oh...kay." I paused a moment. "Did _me and Cupcake_ make you hot?"

She shook her head. "No. _It made me laugh._"

Dane entered the kitchen. "Are you taking off?"

My sister nodded.

"Take me along, please. It's boring here."

I glanced at the doorway. "I thought you _liked_ Riffraff."

"Don't get me wrong," she said. "He's cool, but..." She frowned and stretched. "I'm sick of looking at this dump. Maybe I'm just tired. I don't know."

"You could probably draw more interesting scenery if you wanted to," I said.

"Yeah..." she said halfheartedly. "I don't know. I don't want to mess up the design."

"_All right_," I said. "Good night, I guess. Good luck getting rest around here."

That left Sneezer and Extra.

Sneezer wasn't going anywhere. He kept playing with my tail, and Extra, well, he mostly spent all his time perching on my head and shoulders, or hiding in my pockets.

When I brought out the food, Dane was telling Riffraff and Cleo congratulations, and following Amanda out.

I went back to fanning my `pharaoh.'

"About this free market system," Riffraff said. "Say I decided to make mallets, and anvils..."

"I think you should focus on items that Acme sucks at," I said. "Make rocket skates that don't smash you into rocks, or bombs that don't blow up in your face."

"Assuming I knew how to do that, wouldn't I need a factory?"

"Not necessarily. You can make stuff out of your garage until you get established. That's what Bill Gates did."

I had to explain that one to him.

"Where would I get the employees?"

I sighed. "They're all around you. You start out small."

Riffraff looked at me like I were going to do it all. "So how would we start something like this?"

"You got to do some market research. Grab some Acme stuff. It doesn't matter if it's broken or new or used. Just study it and find out how it's made, and what can be improved. Go from there."

"That will be your assignment for later," he said.

I decided to interpret this as "Pursue it at your own leisure," because that's the only way I intended to do it.

He had me clean up, fluff pillows, feed him grapes, and massage his back. When I stopped being a cute bird, or rat, he ordered me to go back to fanning him.

Cleo was confused. Half the time, she looked jealous, but at other times, she just grinned at my humiliation, or, during a couple strange moments, actually gave me the eye, like she found me cute or something.

Of course, she played it off and acted like she wasn't doing that, and even looked disgusted when I turned into bird woman.

But yeah, I wasn't the only sketchy thing hanging around that place.

Foot massages aren't as gross when the subject is animated, so I didn't care that much when Riffraff asked for one. The same went for massaging the other cats.

The massage tables, conveniently, came from Hammer Space.

"How do you pay the Hammer Space bill if you don't have jobs?" I asked.

"Ixnay on the amerspace hay," he said.

"We'll pay it when we find another contest or money making scheme," Hector said as I pounded his back. "They always come around. You aim for first place, then sell off the second or third place prize you always get. We got five hundred bucks for that bronze comedy trophy we sold off."

"Drew just gave me an idea for our next scheme," Riffraff said. "What was that scheme called again?"

"_Home business_," I groaned. "And it's not simple. You actually work harder to get anywhere with one of those than you would a regular job with an existing company."

"Duh, is that like working from home?" Mongo said.

"Yeah."

"I always wanted to earn money from home."

Typical fat guy, I thought. "It's great if you don't like to relax at home."

Suddenly I heard a doorbell ring.

Yeah. I don't get it, either. They had a pull rope outside, with a bell.

When I answered the door, I saw a monkey in a suit, with a clipboard.

"Is this a bad time?"

I was in Florence mode. "What are you?"

"I'm a Survey Monkey," it said.

I sighed. "What do you want?"

"I'm willing to give you a hundred bucks if you fill out my survey!" And he waved a stack of cash at me.

"Well, I could use a few..."

I thought about snatching the dough, but I was a sport about it, taking the offered pen and filling in the blanks.

Name, address, phone.

Name of employer.

Employer address and phone.

The kind of stuff you put in for those `party for your office' contests at sub shops.

I put down the 1800 number for my office, as a matter of course for such surveys, but I had to dig out the George Washington coat to get the address.

The rest of the survey was complete rubbish.

"Do you like to eat beans?"

"Do you like George Wendt?"

"Do you like to watch movies featuring George Wendt while eating beans?"

And an additional page of various combinations of nouns and verbs involving beans and/or George Wendt.

When I was finished with that stupid exercise, the monkey snatched the clipboard away, shoved the hundred dollars into my hand, then laughed and chattered in an evil way, disappearing into a cloud of red-purple smoke.

"What was _that_ about?" Sneezer said behind me.

"I don't know," I said. "But I'm thinking I probably won't be getting a free catered party."


	55. Chapter 55: Mouseschwitz

Jessica

* * *

When Mickey pulled that weapon out and threatened my life, my first instinct had been to jump into the painting with Misty and hide, but I thought that wouldn't be fair to her, since it would reveal her position to Mickey.

Besides, on TV shows, the enemy always reveals their biggest secrets to their prisoners, either by taking them to the secret lair, or by giving them a "Since you're going to die anyway" speech.

Plus, I could always try using my feminine charms on him.

"All right," I sighed. "I surrender."

Hearing the baby crying, I mean, _hearing Isosceles crying_, I quickly covered by pretending to be sick, moaning and clutching my stomach.

I coughed and clearing my throat like I intended to hack up a loogie.

It worked. I guess Chad silenced the baby after these antics, because nobody looked at the fiberglass Baloo again.

"Frisk her," Mickey said.

The guy with the makeup gave me a regular pat down.

"She's got nothing," he said afterwards. "She's in a bikini."

"Idiot!" said the mouse. "You're doing it all wrong."

With an impatient growl, he marched up to me, reaching into my cleavage.

"Hey!" I cried. "Keep your mitts to yourself, buster!"

He pulled out an enormous mallet, my phone, a pistol, a machine gun, a bundle of TNT, a pair of nunchucks and a copy of the _Mystery Date_ board game.

"With the exception of that phone," I said, "I can swear with one hundred percent honesty that I have absolutely no idea those things were in there. Especially _Mystery Date_."

And then he pulls out my vibrator.

"Okay, so maybe I knew _that_ was in there. But the other things - no clue."

"There," Mickey said, looking rather smug and satisfied. "Put her in restraints."

And so I was handcuffed, with my hands behind my back.

With real handcuffs.

I smirked, but then pretended to be upset. If they were too dumb to figure out their own gag, that was too bad.

I mean, _if I could pull it off..._

I was led to a six seater golf cart designed to look like Goofy with a hat. It was built in rows of two, but I couldn't just roll out the side because I was stuck between Goofy's fiberglass ears, and the rear was blocked in as well.

My guards all picked up mouse ears from their seats, putting them on their heads, as one, by law, would put on a hard hat at a construction site.

As we rolled down the corridor a few yards, I noticed a gun handle sticking out of the pocket of the black polyester uniform next to me. Makeup Guy.

I thought it would be funny if I could slip my hands out of my handcuffs and grab the gun, so I made the attempt.

The moment my hand went out, reaching that way, Mickey spun around in the front passenger seat, pointing his death ray at me. "I wouldn't do that if I were you."

I gave him the finger with my free hand, then slid it back into the cuff.

The Goofymobile sped down a confusing maze of tunnels, arriving at a plain gray security door labeled `WDPD HQ.' The Samoan ran her plastic ID badge over a scanner, and the door opened.

The place looked more like the set of a science fiction movie than a real police station, the entry room reminding me of those movies where people go to a creepy corporation to buy androids, cloned babies, or the souls of poor people. The angular gray sofas added to the effect.

It had tall glass windows looking into various offices, which reminded me of _Bones_ in a way, because they had a forensics lab that looked more like something out of _Star Trek_ than what you'd really use to investigate crimes.

Their reception desk was huge, with a mouse logo, and a giant rotating metal Mickey head a few feet behind it.

A grumpy looking woman in a gold _Beauty and the Beast_ style gown occupied the desk, typing something on a computer. I noticed she had a conferencing phone, a set of ticket machines and a jar of suspicious looking candy in front of her.

Mickey led me into an elevator with ceiling to floor monitors displaying everything from the old style ducks and cows from the dawn of Walt Disney's empire, to _Big Hero 6_ and _Marvel's Avengers_.

Their Muzak system was now playing that _Part of Your World_ song from _Little Mermaid _("What's the word?..._Dumb_!"). I imagine they used that same music to force Noriega out of his compound.

"If you're going to kill me," I said. "Just get it over with. Don't torture me with this drivel."

Nobody responded.

We stood inside this elevator, no one speaking to each other. Unless you count Mickey mouthing the words to the song as `speech.'

A minute later, the elevator came open again.

When I stepped out, I literally found myself on the bridge of _The Black Hole_. Since they were the ones who produced it, and owned all the rights, they had repurposed the actual set for use as a surveillance hub.

Instead of showing readouts of space, planets, life support or engine data, they had a bunch of camera views from inside the various gift shops, restaurants, rides, employee stations and bathrooms.

Employees in red robes and silver face masks sat along the outer banks of monitors, one of them flipping the plate back to slurp from a large fountain drink.

On the inner row, a station lower than the rest of the room, covered in radios, park controls and conferencing equipment, _they had a bunch of guys in dresses_.

I'm still not sure what that was about. I know that Walt Disney once refused to fire a gay guy because he did good background paintings or something, but this was ridiculous.

It was like they had a _dress code_.

They all wore red and white spots, you know, Minnie Mouse pattern, _with_ _miniskirts_, and they had mouse ears (complete with bow), black leggings, and red pumps.

If that wasn't bizarre enough, they had a taller guy, one with an eyepatch and a beret, in a black dress, leggings and black boots.

This man snapped to attention and saluted Mickey has he passed. "Herr Maus!"

Mickey nodded. "_Commandant._"

"This is cute," I said. "Who's your tailor? Ru Paul?"

"You're right," said the guy with the girly eye makeup. "She _is_ a spy."

"Sir," one of the Minnies said to Beret Man, pointing to his monitor. "We've caught a little girl shoplifting."

"Send her to the dungeon of the Haunted Mansion," Commandant said. "Show her no mercy."

"What about the mother?"

"Place here in the room with those _things_ at IASW."

"But that's inhumane!"

Commandant didn't care. "They shouldn't have shoplifted."

"What's IASW?" I asked.

"It's A Small World," said Mr. Mascara. "It's more expedient to use acronyms."

"Sir," said another Minnie. "The peeping Tom is back at the ladies' dressing room."

"Don't bother me with trifles, ensign," Commandant said. "They're grown women. Let them take care of themselves."

I whistled. "I'm glad _I_ don't work here! _And I always thought it would be the best job ever._"

"Come with me," Mickey said gruffly, leading me through the angular corridor set the faceless guys carried corpses through in the _Black Hole_.

I was taken to a Mickey Mouse interrogation room. Literally.

I'm pretty sure they recycled the honeycomb patterned holding cell from _Agents of Shield. _It had silver mouse ears on the walls, a steel table embossed with Mickey and all his friends, and a giant sign on the door showed the mouse with a police hat.

The guards shoved me into a metal chair with a mouse logo on it, cuffing me to the type of handcuff bars they have on all those cop shows.

Mickey waved and two of my escorts stepped out, the other two standing sentry at the door.

And then Mr. Eyepatch came in.

Not as cute as Chad.

"Who is this?" the man asked.

"_That_ is why she is here, Commandant," Mickey said. "This is the blip you found in the employee access tunnel."

Commandant stared at me. "She's animated!"

I crossed my legs, and I turned human.

Mr. Eyepatch frowned. "._..Mostly._"

The mouse pointed a lamp in my face. "Who are you?"

"Jessica Buckthorn," I said.

I could have given my real name, but I wanted to protect my credit, my mostly spotless court record, and my good name.

Commandant propped one boot up on a nearby chair. Not such a great thing to do in a skirt.

Through the mesh of his sheer nylons, I could tell he shaved his legs. In between that and the fact I couldn't see any activity going on under there pretty much told me what I needed to know: My feminine charms wouldn't work here.

"What are you doing here?"

Glancing down at my outfit, I realized I would have to be very creative with my lies.

Mickey took out an Iphone, texting someone. I could _guess_ what that was about.

"I...I was making out with a guy in the bushes, and about halfway into it, the rat stole my clothing and ran off somewhere. I was _so_ pissed."

Mickey rolled his eyes. "_And all you could find to wear was that cape._"

"_Yeah,_" I said. "Your souvenir shop is overpriced, so I thought I'd swipe some costumes from your `employees only' store. Those red dresses, though..._they're really designed for someone less bosomy._"

Mickey reached across the table, grabbing me by that collar thing that I normally wear for sexier purposes.

He was stronger than I expected him to be. Of course, I had turned animated when he grabbed me.

"Can the crap. Animated people don't just _waltz_ into restricted areas of Walt Disney resorts."

"I know how to pick locks," I said. "_And I really wanted clothes._"

He squeezed my collar tighter. "How did you get into Tinkerbell's Tunnels!"

I chortled through my nose. "I snorted some magic dust."

Mickey slapped me across the face.

"It's not nice to hit a woman," I said.

"That's exactly what Minnie told me."

He slapped me again. "How did you get into Tinkerbell's Tunnel?"

"With my fingers," I purred. "Mmmm..._I just reached under her skirt_, and..."

Another slap to the face.

The Samoan lady marched into the room. "We checked credit card accounts, license plates and hotel registries. No record of any Jessica Buckthorn anywhere in the system."

Commandant narrowed his eye. "What is your name!"

"Your boss, _who incidentally is animated_, answers to the name `Mickey Mouse' and you question what _I_ say? Talk about a double standard!"

That earned me a slap.

"Name," Mickey growled.

"I'm a fictional character!" I cried. "Maybe I don't have a name or credit card or anything!"

Mickey shook me, yelling in my face. "How did you get into the tunnels!"

"I picked the lock!" I yelled back.

"Name!" Commandant hollered.

Slap!

"What are you doing in Disneyland!"

"I wanted to see _The Pirates of the __Caribbean_!" I said.

Slap!

"Try again!"

"Okay, okay. I really came all the way to California to see _E.T. The Ride_."

Slap!

"This is _Florida!_"

"_No wonder the place looks funny!_"

Slap!

"Name!"

Commandant stepped out of the room, returning with a small portable stereo. He pushed a button, and I was blasted with _A Whole New World_.

And slapped.

"Fine!" I shouted. "You want the truth? I found a portal into a cartoon universe, and one of the animated characters I met there opened a portal to your stupid tunnel. Can I go now?"

Commandant just shook his head, cranking up the volume. "_What_ were you doing in the tunnel?"

"Name!" Mickey yelled.

"You are clearly part human," said Commandant. "And humans have _identities_."

Mickey slapped me. "Why are you here!"


	56. Chapter 56: Millenium Central

"Wait," I told Mickey as he raised his hand again. "What are these `things' in the It's A Small World ride you were talking about?"

In response, he shouted, "I'll take you to meet them if you don't give me the answers I want!"

And that was explanatory as it got.

"All right, all right!" I cried as I was struck again. "_I tell you every thing!"_

The two stared at me expectantly.

I did my best impression of that character from _Mad TV_. "He..._He look like a man._"

"Do you like getting slapped?" Mickey said.

"I don't know," I said. "I _am_ wearing a kinky bondage costume, but I'm _really not feeling it right now_."

He punched me in the stomach.

"What would people say if I told everyone about you locking children in a dungeon?" I threatened.

Mickey shrugged. "This isn't the corner drugstore, Ms..._Whoever You Are_."

"Buckthorn," I supplied.

"_Whatever._ The point is, it's just your word against mine, and we're a billion dollar company. We own every major media outlet. Any negative publicity you throw at us won't stick because we'll blanket the press with programming saying how great we are, and we'll keep blanketing it until your smear campaign goes bankrupt. The world will think it's all just a bunch of sour grapes. More money hungry schemers trying to bite a chunk out of the Disney empire. It's cute, in a pathetic sort of way."

I shook my head in disbelief. "Sounds like you've really thought this out. Who else have you given that speech to?"

The mouse gave me a thin smile. "Have you heard of _Google_?"

When I looked confused, he said, "You should try it sometime. _Fascinating source of crackpot conspiracy theories._"

I frowned.

"Now..." the mouse said. "Where were we?"

I heard a knock on the door, and the bulky dark haired woman came in, bearing an envelope. "Herr Mickey, sir! Important message from Friendship Ambassador Sleezington."

"Yes, yes," Mickey grumbled, ripping it open.

It was a piece of paper, folded over several times.

He scowled, spreading it out on the table.

All I saw was a circle, drawn by a ball point pen.

"What is this!" Mickey shouted, turning the paper around and around.

"Um, this is just a guess," I said. "But I think it's a concept design for a toy. `_You know, for kids!'_"

"What?" Mickey said with an expression of bafflement,.

"_Hudsucker Proxy,_" I said. "Great movie. You should watch it sometime."

He glared at me for a moment, then his eyes widened in shock. "I never hired anyone named Sleezington!"

A slender hand shot out of the two dimensional circle, punching the mouse in the face.

A second later, I was being grabbed by the shoulders, then forcefully yanked facefirst into the paper.

I was human, so the only thing accomplished by the action was a lot of hurt.

"How is this possible!" Mickey yelled. "This room has cartoon power suppression fields!"

"Sir, forgive me for saying so," said Mr. Mascara. "But remember that line from _Jurassic Park?_"

Mickey rolled his eyes. "`Shit happens?'"

"No," said the man. "The other one. `Life finds a way.'"

"Because it's funny," Mickey muttered under his breath like he were swearing.

I didn't hear the rest of it, because the hands pulled me into the piece of paper again.

This time, my head didn't stop at the paper surface and/or table. _I actually went through_,_ into the two dimensional plane_.

I blinked, and Misty was pulling me onto a paved walkway near Journey Into Imagination. I could see the glass pyramids a few yards away, swarming with stupid tourists with too much money in their pockets. Behind us lay a lagoon.

I stared at my manner of transport, a piece of paper with glowing crystals placed on the corners.

Well, whatever works.

I looked around the mob, but, due to the bizarre and garish outfits everyone wore, I couldn't tell where anyone was, even if they happened to be a cartoon made of human skin.

"Where's Chad?"

Misty shrugged. "Probably still signing autographs in front of the Buzz Lightyear ride. I told him to say he was part of the new _Invasion of the Kangaroo Mutants_ ride."

I stared at her for a moment. "Anywhere else, and I'd say you didn't know how to lie right. But we're standing in the middle of a dozen stupidly named stores and restaurants, so your alibi is one hundred percent compelling."

Half concealed by cartoon themed topiary creations, we still received a lot of stares, applause and people taking selfies in front of the spectacle.

I marched forward and took a bow, telling the onlookers to see more at Sexysquirrelgraphicartsandproductions dot net (the phone's acting up - couldn't get the file to save the actual URL) as I juggled rocks and sang the Prince Ali song from _Aladdin_, _and_ that popular one that says that people in Arabia cut off your hand if they don't like your face.

The benches in that area looked like eggs, kind of like the chairs I'd seen in photos of the 1978 World's Fair, or _Men In Black_, except they seated more than one person. Misty reclined in one, watching me work.

When I started trying to guess people's ages and weights and birthdays, informing them several times about my website's features, custom animation and birthday parties, people started getting bored and walking away.

At least, _I thought_ they were bored. Who knows? They may have crashed the website with a million hits or something.

Misty clapped appreciatively. "I wish I knew how to do that!"

"What?" I said. "Be boring?"

She said yes.

Rolling my eyes, I said, "Why spoil things? You're so fun!"

"What would be a good way to get Drew's geographic location and place of business?" she said suddenly.

"Uh..." I hesitated. I really didn't have it out for Drew, but Misty was a friend, and she had just got me out of a tight jam.

Swallowing, I said, "I still think Drew is kind of cute. For that reason, I really don't want to..._ruin things_. Just in case..._you know_. So I really wish you'd do some of the work on that yourself."

Noting that this sounded bad, I quickly added, "Don't get me wrong, I love working for you, and would like to help out in any way I can, but, well, that's not something I want to touch. _I hope you understand._"

Misty nodded. "Yes. I think I do." But then she said, "I just need a _hint._"

With a sigh, I said, "You know those little forms they have in sub shops?"

"No?" she said.

I explained, and she made a call with a little tricorder thing.

"Wait," I said. "What did you do with Miley?"

Misty opened a panel on a decorative brass pillar topped with the planet Saturn, revealing our captive, now with a gag tied around her mouth.

"Come," she said, dragging the woman out. "We have a spike to procure."

We followed Master Blaster's computer down a path running beside the Innoventions plaza, earning a place in about a thousand websites, and twice that many Facebook walls.

Sigh.

The moment we passed by that building with the big glass volcano things, I noticed the spacesuit wearing metal statues of Mickey and friends turning their heads like _The Exorcist_.

Their arms and legs began to move, each of them moving in an intercept course.

People stopped and took pictures, clapping, as before. I guess they thought this was some more wizardry from The Imagineers, or something.

I guess it could be. Maybe stuff like the animatronic T-Rex at Mickey's Parade is just a front for covert military experiments. They certainly have more money than the Pentagon, so anything's possible.

Whatever the agenda, this was no show. As they marched forward in zombie-like fashion, I noticed their gloved fingers folding down like a flip top cigarette lighter, exposing the suspiciously gun-like muzzles of some sort of weapon.

I saw a flash, and a chunk of a nearby tree exploded in a shower of wood chips.


	57. Chapter 57: Oui Oui Oui

Drew

* * *

"So," Amanda said as she was driving me to the apartment. "How was slave duty?"

"It was all right," I said, idly playing with my tail. For the last fifteen minutes or so, I had been sort of the male version of Vanessa Vixx. I had cat ears, a tail, slacks, and a windbreaker with an ascot. I supposed my ink levels were balancing out or something. "I made about fifty bucks."

"That's great!" she said. "How'd you pull that off?"

And so I told her.

I had begun a search of the junkyard an hour or so after she had left.

The place contained a wide assortment of Acme products, of varying degrees of usefulness.

It also contained a creepy looking altar covered with arcane markings, surrounded by skulls on pikes. I'm not sure what that was about, but the moment I saw green translucent hands reaching out of it, I hurried away as quick as I could.

Especially when it started thundering, and lightning flashed across the stone obelisks.

I slipped on a puddle of green slime, coming away from the mess with my hands covered in black feathers. I wiped my hands, backing away further.

It seemed the thunderstorm was some sort of microburst, for the weather returned to normal once I returned to the steadily growing pile of Acme items I had been gathering together.

As I stared at the things I had uncovered, I came to the conclusion that half the items that backfired on the Coyote had backfired due to improper use.

Explosives, for example. Or the Triple Strength Battleship Armor Plate.

I picked up a bent up pair of roller skis, staring at it.

"That pair of skis look fine to me," Wordsworth said. "Why they're broke is a mystery."

He and Mongo had been assigned to help me while Riffraff and Cleo `enjoyed the evening'.

"Maybe all terrain wheels will help," I muttered. "And maybe an instruction manual telling you not to roll off a cliff."

"Duh, maybe you could make some padding," Mongo said. "So that people don't get hurt!"

I nodded. "I _knew_ you were smarter than you acted!"

The big gray cat smiled stupidly, sticking his finger in his ear.

We'd been looking at stuff like this for what seemed like hours. I still didn't know what to think about the jet propelled pogo stick. Why would anyone want to buy something like that?

"I bet you could bounce to the moon with that," Mongo said as I turned it over in my hands.

"The thing's a bust," Wordsworth agreed. "There's too much thrust."

We'd actually fixed the thing once, and I ended up punching a hole in the roof of the office building behind the dump.

Excuse me. _Holes_.

Honestly, it weirded me out. First I'm screaming my head off as I'm bouncing a few hundred miles above Toon Town, then I'm slamming into the very heart of mundanity.

It was an actual executive office with real people in it. I destroyed a desk in the Payroll office and broke a bunch of stuff, keyboards, monitors, some kind of decorative vase.

A short little black man, probably the CEO, was looking all pissed off, but not completely surprised.

I ended up sprawled on my back in their meticulously cut back yard, which, for some reason, had real grass in it.

I kind of guessed I might not be considered for employment there anytime soon, but hey, no big loss.

At any rate, the pogo stick worked, so we scoured the junkyard for compatible looking control units, and any sort of device that acted as a sphincter, widening to decrease thrust, narrowing to concentrate thrust.

The best control unit we could think of was a push button car radio, which added kind of a fun extra feature. For the choke mechanism, we used part of a discarded mouse strangulation machine.

In case you're wondering, you would have had to shove Sneezer's head inside the cage and waited for the slow moving hand to tighten around his neck, for it to even work. The owner must have decided it easier just to strangle mice the old fashioned way.

Wiring is oversimplified in Cool World. Everything is red, green, yellow or some other pastel color, like that TV game show where you defuse bombs full of tapioca pudding.

Figuring out where all the wires went was absurdly simple. As long as you're not colorblind, wiring is as easy as red to red, blue to blue, green to green. Just hook it up to the generic gray box and you're done.

So...skipping over the boring technical details (because there aren't any), we developed a successful prototype, with six channel change buttons for six different height settings. I decided to put the off switch near the handle, as an actual switch, in case the pogo person isn't a music fan.

Sure, still probably a recipe for disaster (like if someone decided to change channels), but a vast improvement to the uncontrollable joke of a product the Acme company devised.

I did the generic cartoon thing of creating padding with pillows and such, which worked fairly well for my purposes.

I safely cruised the neighboring area, rising no further than rooftop level on a small house. It played _Satisfaction_ for me while I bounced, which was slightly cool.

I landed fairly gracefully in front of a house, which was great.

I then got mobbed with strange looking cartoon kids, which wasn't so much.

The doodles looked like they had been drawn by someone with Parkinson's. A yellow guy with a buzz cut and a green jacket, a tan guy with a black hat, a red faced guy, a kid with that old kind of braces where the metal wraps around your face, and an Indian kid.

_Ed, Edd and Eddie._

They even had the kid with the smiley face piece of wood hanging out with them.

They didn't stare at me that much, probably because they lived among weird looking characters all day. They mostly stared at the pogo stick.

The whole gang asked me for rides on my amazing new prototype. I said no, I was looking to sell.

"I'll give you a hundred jawbreakers for it!" said the pink faced one with the red and yellow shirt.

"Try a hundred _dollars_," I said.

"We don't have a hundred dollars," said the Ed with the black cap and the orange shirt.

They were kids, and the materials I used were recycled, so I said, "Can you at least meet me halfway at fifty? _I'll throw in the padding._"

"We don't have fifty," said the cap guy.

Groaning, I said, "How much _do_ you have?"

They offered me two dollars and fifty cents.

"That's our final offer," one of the Eds said.

"No deal," I replied. "I'm certain the materials alone go for around forty five."

Admittedly, not my materials, but I figured the junkyard owner would be reimbursed for them, one way or another.

"We've got twenty two fifty," said the stupid cross eyed one, Ed, I believe, and not Double D.

The other kids glared at the slow kid.

"Don't tell him that!" snapped Hat Guy.

"Twenty five," I said. "That's as low as I'll go."

I heard violins playing as Eddy told me some store about how they were saving the money to build a giant treehouse with a jawbreaker dispenser and a soda machine or something ridiculous like that.

"You don't have to buy it," I said. "Build your treehouse. I'll sell this to someone else."

"I'll go get the money jar," Ed said.

He zipped away, coming back with a handful of cash...and change.

So I had my first sale.

When I told the cats at the dump about it, they got excited and thought I was, or rather, _they were_ going to be millionaires overnight.

I explained that wasn't how it worked. I frowned at the money I collected, worried about someone stealing it, maybe even a cat.

"Is there a bank around here?" I asked.

"I wouldn't use it if I were you," Hector replied. "They get robbed every day, and blown up every week."

"There's a superhero bank in town," Wordsworth said. "But they won't accept just any clown."

"I'll have to ask dad," I muttered, stuffing the money in my colonial peacoat.

We tinkered with a few more things that evening, a primitive sort of DaVinci inspired airplane that you pedaled, a jet propelled unicycle (I put car tires on the sides for support), and a hot air balloon, among other objects.

There were a few Acme products that I couldn't fathom, like the large `Artificial Rock', the `Earthquake Pills', or the `Anti-Nightmare Machine' that resembled a mechanical bull.

I also found something called an `Electric Eye Security System', which was so basic that you could do better building one from scratch.

We modified some rocket skates to operate at a slower speed and sold those, but that was about it for the evening.

"It sounds like you're finding your niche," Amanda said when I had finished telling her all this.

I just frowned. "I'm not so sure. It's all a big gray area. The trade laws, the copyright laws, sales tax, espionage, insider trading...if we ever get big enough to get established, I don't know what will happen."

"I'm sure you'll figure something out."

She smoothed out her see through plastic skirt. "What do you think of the outfit?"

I guess she must have had another visit to the mold machine or something, because she now had on a little white and red jacket, midriff length, with long transparent sleeves. Through the skirt, I could see a white bikini bottom, trimmed with red piping, and she had on a pair of long white and red boots that came up way above the knee.

She had traded in the regular set of bunny ears for an angular slightly robotic looking pair. Overall, her outfit resembled that of a Japanese cartoon character.

I swallowed. "It's, uh..._cute._"

"_Drew..._" she said.

"Fine," I blurted. "It's _really cute._"

"Are you going to do it again?" Sneezer said over my shoulder.

The mouse had been quietly hanging around me as I worked all evening. Since I had been human, or at least male most of the time, I noticed his interest in me waning a little. He even started reading a bunch of books oddly specific to our situation, like _Sexual Identity Issues In Half Doodle Hybrids_, _Loving the Transformed Humanoid, Bring Out the Amorous Rodent in Anyone, _and _Touching The Inner Rodent of a Shapeshifting Mutant._

I tried to peek at a couple of them, but he'd quickly shoved them back into Hammer Space.

The fact that I had remained consistently male had kept him from hanging around my neck.

"I don't think so," I answered, but Amanda said, "_Anything's possible._"

I sighed. "Do you _really_ want to go back the way you were?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. _Do you?_"

"I thought you wanted to become one hundred percent human," I said.

Amanda frowned. "I do. But you obviously aren't happy about it. I thought maybe, since mom is still working on the cure..."

"That _seems_ like a good idea," I said. "But I don't know if it would work. There's a chance you might just take whatever's left of my humanity and make me completely animated."

"I guess you're right. Still, I wonder what you were thinking when you were kissing Cupcake."

Stammering, I said, "Um...`Get off me'?"

The expression on her face said that she didn't buy it. "_Drew..._"

"Okay," I blurted. "I admit she's a nice kisser, but I'm not into baby play."

Looking disappointed, my sister said, "I suppose it's just as well. Dane _is_ trying to sleep."

Chips pulled up in front of the apartment, and we all got out, Amanda folding the vehicle into a suitcase.

As we were sitting in the genie bottle elevator, staring at the sparkly designs on the walls, I felt something wrap around my tail. I was a rodent again, apparently.

The guy seemed tired, leaning against me. It wasn't anything perverted, so I let him do this for a few moments.

But then I noticed his paw sliding over my thigh.

I opened my mouth to complain, but then I found I was myself in animated form, male, so he quickly pulled his paw away.

If Sneezer ever became bi, it would all be over.

When I entered the apartment, I saw Dane curled up on the little sofa by the bookshelves. To my chagrin, I saw that Amanda had been helping her dress.

I admit, not as risque, but not the kind of thing you wear outside a nightclub.

It was all black, the upper portion a small sort of vest with a skull and snakes painted on it in sort of an Aztec style, with a tall fan collar. For the bottom portion she had a diagonally slanting skirt with a skull on the butt. I noticed this last item because she was curled up with her rear end facing the door. She had long boots and wrist cuffs with spiky studs on them.

She didn't stir when we came in. It must have been a long day for her.

I wearily staggered over to the bed and flopped down on the covers.

"Honey," Amanda said as she climbed in next to me. "You'll get it all wrinkled!"

I frowned. "What?"

"The French maid," she said, tugging at the bottom of the dress.

It rolled up like a window shade, leaving only the neck piece.

"I don't understand," I said. "How would that not wrinkle it?"

"This is Cool World," she said. "Just accept it."

When she pulled the collar over my head, I suddenly noticed I had been stripped to my underwear.

She pressed me to the bed, straddling my hips as she unbuttoned her skirt.

The birds squeezed out of my rolled up clothing, fluttering up to the bookshelves to get a good view of the action. Sneezer was eating popcorn.

"No," I said. "We're not doing _that_. _We just had this discussion a few seconds ago._"

Without a word, she unzipped her little jacket partway, taking out a flat little glistening package.

I groaned. "I see you've been giving this some thought."

She tore it open with her teeth, pulling out...a glowing condom.

She stretched it out and I saw it was animated, thankfully without a talking face.

"Okay...a _lot_ of thought."

The mouse had brought out a chair from somewhere, slurping noisily from a soda as he watched us. A real mouse would explode, because they can't digest carbonation. I kind of wished for that to happen..._and kinda didn't_.

As if this were not embarrassing enough, I noticed Dane sitting up on the couch, staring at us.

"You guys care if I watch?"

"Not at all," my sister said.

She waved the condom at me. "I thought about getting Midnight Cowboy or the French Tickler, but I wasn't sure you'd want it talking back."

I nodded. "_That definitely would have been disturbing!_"

I flickered, transforming into a humanoid rat creature.

"Now," she breathed, laying down on top of me. "Let's see who kisses better. Me, or Queen Poopy Bird."

"Honestly," Dane said. "You'd have to wash a lot less cars if more birds _did_ wear Depends."

My sister turned her head to glare at her. "Dane, sweetie, I don't mind you watching, but could you refrain from talking until the end of the performance?"

Giggling through her nose, Dane pantomimed zipping her lips.

As Amanda brought her chin close, lips poised to meet mine, I turned real. "You know, we never really kissed that much before."

"A pity," she said, giving me a deep heavy one.

After about a minute or so of doing this, rubbing up against me and everything, she pulled away and said, "How's _that_ compare to bird beak?"

Ironically, I had become a crow. "I don't know which is worse," I chirped. "Telling you I like kissing Diaper Bird, or saying that my sister kisses better than...my other girlfriends?"

"_Half_ sister," she purred, kissing me again. "But I'll take it."

I was now green and had antennas sticking out of my head, but I was still male, and only had on a pair of boxers. She sat back on my legs, tugging them down.

"This isn't right," I said.

"We've got protection, and you're green," she answered, like that made it okay.

"I know. It's still wrong."

I was now my cartoon self image, with my ink and paint shorts pulled down.

"Your Like Meter is saying something else," she said.

"What does it know?" I said.

She shrugged. "_It knows what it likes._"

And so she starts unrolling the cartoon contraceptive over my Like Meter.

Once it had been pulled down a certain length, I noticed a mustache on it, and a thin little mouth.

The mouth opened. "You have a _wee weewee_, monsieur."

"Oh damn," Amanda said. "_I grabbed the wrong ones._"

But really, she didn't seem to be _that_ upset.

I paled. "_Ones?_ As in plural?"

That's when I heard a muffled "_Whee doggies!_"

"I hope you don't mind too much," she said, pulling it all the way on. "It doesn't _look_ like you do..."

I thought of the phrase "Sacre bleu" and immediately cringed.

I was real now, shorts of glowing paint down around my legs.

"What happens if I turn into a female?" I said. "Is it just going to fall off?"

"Why would it fall off?" she said, removing my boxers completely. "More than fifty percent of what you turn into has to do with your psychological state. I should know, I've dealt with it all my life."

"Then...maybe we should spend the evening practicing how to do that," I said, turning into sort of an anatomically correct robot.

She fingered the French Tickler. "Exactly. This is going to be an educational experience for both of us."

"Wait," I said. "What are you going to learn?"

Amanda shrugged. _"Technique._"

I was now a naked clown, but she didn't care. She grabbed my hands, sliding my fingers into the waistband of her bikini bottom.

"But it'll fall off, right? If I abruptly change sexes for a minute?"

"It's animated," she said, following up with a kiss. "It can go concave, like a diaphragm."

"I was not aware that monsieur's weewee was that wee wee," the tickler said. "But I will accommodate whatever madame wishes."

"You _had_ to get the talking condom," I groaned.

She honked my red nose. "It won't talk so much once it's _inside something."_

That just made me shudder.

I was real, and naked, with my fingers in her waistband, but I still hesitated.

I really wasn't sure I wanted to go through with this. I know what my body was saying, but_ c'mon. We're related._

She _made_ my fingers pull the bikini bottom off.

Well, I thought as she rubbed against me, easing herself down to the point of insertion. I suppose this is nothing I haven't done before.

That's as far as we got.

Suddenly I had breasts, my voice raising a couple octaves as I softly moaned.

"Sacre bleu!" cried the Tickler. "Where did you go?"

"C'mon Drew!" Amanda growled as she rubbed up and down against my orange furry body. "Focus! Think about _me!_ Think about _how I make you feel!_"

"I am!" I said.

"Then pretend I'm _someone else!_ Cupcake, and ex girlfriend, _anything!_"

She kissed my muzzle like a sex starved lesbian, fondling me all over the place. I only turned into a girl parrot.

"You're my sister," I explained.

In a fit of sexual frustration, she let out that Yosemite Sam noise. She sounded just like her mother, which killed the mood even more. I turned into a female bat.

"Fine!" she shouted, climbing off the bed. "I get it! _You don't like women!_ I understand completely! _I don't either!_"

"I thought you were going to _train him,_" Dane said.

Both I and my sister glared at her.

She raised her hands defensively. "_You_ _said_ _to_ _wait until the show was over..._"

Amanda shook her head, pulling her bikini bottom back on. "I said I'd _train him_, not _control his mind._"

I turned into rat girl. Realizing who was looking, I quickly pulled sheets over my chest.

My sister seemed to notice this, for she marched up to the mouse, snatching away his popcorn bucket. "All right, Sneezer. _You give it a try._ He's going to break, one way or another!"

The mouse eagerly leapt to his feet, rubbing his paws together. "Hot diggity dog!"

As he jumped into bed with me, Amanda took a seat in Sneezer's chair, scooping mouthfuls of popcorn into her mouth as she slowly crossed and uncrossed her legs.

"_Wow_," Sneezer said as he took off his jacket. "I know you promised a date, but I had no idea it was _that_ kind of date!"

"It's not," I stammered. "Really, Sneezer. Believe me, it's not."

"Then why are your nipples hardening?"

I pulled the covers back up, letting out an embarrassed squeak. "It's cold!"

He pulled off his shirt and laid on top of me, rubbing his naked chest against my bare breasts. "Then let me warm you."

I let out my loudest girly scream ever, and actually did that thing where you turn into a puff of smoke, jump through a wall, and leave a hole shaped like your body behind you.

I ended up colliding with a figure in a yellow jumpsuit out in the hallway.

Reddish brown hair. Sort of freckly.

"April!" I blurted.

The woman narrowed her eyes at me. "Do I know you?"

"Uh, no," I said. "I just...loved that piece you did about the Foot Clan."

She smiled. "Thank you."

There was an awkward pause. I guessed it might have something to do with me being naked, but _Bugs Bunny_ was naked, and nobody cared about _that_.

"So," I said. "What are _you_ doing up _here?_"

April took out a notepad. "I'm investigating an incident that happened at the C.C. Knicknockers establishment earlier today, one resulting in several injuries and thousands of dollars in property damage. It appears that, before the incident, a _brown rodent in a kimono_ had been sighted in the area..."

Unsurprisingly, I just so happened to match that description, without the clothes.

"Have you noticed anything unusual in the area lately? Any strange new tenants?"

"_No..."_ I said. That tenant would be me.

April frowned.

"Don't look at me," I said. "I don't even own a kimono."

She sighed, staring at me like she didn't quite believe me, but then did that thing you see in all those _Fugitive_ type movies, when the guy puts on a really bad disguise, and the cop is too dumb to realize that the sketchy guy with the false mustache and glasses is still wearing a prison uniform.

"My apologies, ma'am," she said. "I've just heard reports of a doodle matching that description, and a vehicle similar to the one found at the scene of the crime was seen at this location."

The Owlmobile _had_ been to the high rise a few times.

"I don't know what you're talking about," I lied.

She looked even more suspicious, then even more like a dopey movie cop.

"Well, if you ever do see her, tell her she's an inspiration to all animal lovers, and I'd love to have an interview with her."

As flattering as this all was, I suspected this to either be a trap, or a great way to get my ass kicked by Miss Terious's goons.

"I'll...let her know."

She gave me a weird look again, then walked away.

You're a cartoon," I told myself. Cartoons never have a dull moment. That's good and bad.

I wandered down the hallway, trying to sort out my thoughts.

"I see _you're enjoying yourself,_" a familiar voice said.

Looking up, I saw Amanda's mother, now in human form. Fair skin, hair the color of tarnished gold.

I looked down and saw that I was human again, and naked.

"Actually, fun was trying to be had _with me_, and I wasn't having it."

She rolled her eyes like I did that kind of thing all the time, then pointed to a watch on her wrist.

"See that? I haven't turned into a doodle for more than twelve hours!"

"You found a cure?" I shouted with barely contained excitement.

"It's difficult to say," she said. "But so far, I haven't changed back. I think it's a very good sign. Come into my suite. I'll show you."


	58. Chapter 58: Merry Mausoleum

Jessica

* * *

If you've read my description of Disneyland and thought I didn't know what I was talking about, that's partially intentional. If people actually knew where Mickey installed his own death machines, he'd move them, which will make it harder for us to destroy the installations in the future.

Also, it's because a guy dressed as Minnie shot me in the head with some kind of electrical charge, which screwed my memories up.

Anyways, those things, and guys in drag, were firing at us, and we were running. One of their blasts _did_ hit me in the head, and Misty and her boyfriend were carrying me, firing at robotic Mickey and Goofy with their own weaponry.

Misty's bug luggage thing moved remarkably fast, a handy thing because she kept pulling weapons out of it.

The English coonhound-ish head of one of the machines exploded. The response of the crowd was similar to something you'd hear at The Haunted Mansion. Nobody thought it was real.

I knocked over a fat guy in a pirate shirt, which I felt bad about, and then a staff lady dressed as Snow White, which I didn't feel bad about at all.

Chad somehow caught up with us as Misty was showing me how to use her weapons.

I blew up Daisy Duck, something I'm very proud of.

Storefronts, porches of restaurants, and other decoration shattered and exploded in the melee.

Following a map on her computer, Misty led us to a locked gate behind that enormous Silver Golf Ball Thing, blasting through the lock. The Mickey Mouse intercom system shouted at us as we barged down the staircase, into the darkened tunnel beyond.

It looked like the entrance to a subway. A nice subway. One with shrubbery all around the staircase, to hide it from nosy tourists.

One wall had been defaced with permanent marker, but when I read what it said, I figured the writing was worth more than the wall.

"Lost Boyz Hideout

Pan Wuz Heer.

Just flew in from Neverland Ranch

Bubbles says hi

Blanket Can fly

Yours truly,

-Micheal J"

The signature looked authentic.

So _that's_ why he dangled the baby out that Paris window, I thought.

We destroyed a steel security door, breaking into another set of underground tunnels, this one with lots of loud humming machines, quite a few of them banging and thundering around, you know, _action rides_.

They were set up in separate white rooms, with glass windows and card scanner doors. A lot of them looked like the Prepress hub of a printing company, all those stacks of flashing computers everywhere.

Actually, I guess it would be closer to an electric plant or Mission Control at Cape Kennedy...

We passed room after room of nothing but thousand dollar computer stations, monitored by yuppies in business casual. I bet Mickey would have had them in dresses too, if these guys didn't occasionally show up on TV.

The other rooms contained huge hydraulic machinery, and you could hear the sounds of dinosaurs and screaming people upstairs as one of the pumps shot a support strut upwards and downwards.

Hearing the sounds of boots stomping down steps, I spun around and saw a dozen men in Minnie outfits rushing after us, bearing animated and non-animated guns.

Misty took a grenade out of her bug suitcase, pulling the pin.

"Wait," I said. "How big an explosion is that going to make?"

She shrugged. "Pretty big. Why?"

"Well," I said. "If it's too big, there's a chance that it'll take out the foundation supports and kill hundreds of innocent tourists."

"I thought you wanted to be a villainess."

I frowned. "I suppose, barring any disabled children, we _would_ only be killing the wealthiest one tenth of the population..._A tenth who don't know how to spend money_..."

Misty tossed the grenade.

The floor behind us collapsed, revealing a vast winery operation, _and_ a secret marijuana farm. The guys in Minnie Mouse outfits, that weren't obliterated in the blast, _or_ killed by flying debris, lost their footing on the rapidly collapsing concrete flooring, tumbling into wine processing machinery, knocking down rack upon rack of Mickey's finest vintage.

The pot, of course, was not within smoking distance.

The whole building rocked with the explosion, the walls and support pillars cracking.

Misty led us onward down the corridor.

More machines. Maybe _Star Wars_ or _ET _or something Marvel related.

At the end of this pristine though cracking tunnel lay an elevator. Instead of a call button, it only had a slot for a key card and a retinal scan.

Misty blew up the security panel with a small explosive device, and we were in.

Not as fancy as the other elevator I'd seen. No TV's or anything, but it was still the kind of elaborate computerized thing you'd see at a pricey hotel.

Miley struggled against her bonds, trying to escape, but Misty iced her again.

"Could we _please_ do something about that bimbo?" I asked. "Maybe turn her into a drawing or something?"

"We need to get closer to the spike," she said. "I'm afraid my crystals will produce an incomplete sketch, which could be fatal."

"_We don't want that,_" I agreed.

I looked around for number buttons, only to discover that this also required a card key.

"Great," I groaned. "Now what."

Misty frowned and shook her head. "If only we had an artist present..."

"_Yeah,_" I said. "If you did, _what exactly would I be doing?_"

"Oh excellent!" she said, clapping her hands in delight.

She pulled a drawing pad and a cartoon pencil out of her bug, offering them to me. "_Do me a solid._"

I didn't know if she had been spying on me, or if she just happened to watch the same TV show, or maybe that figure of speech just came to her, but it kind of bothered me. I acted like it didn't, though.

I took the items, staring at them. "Like, a new elevator button or something?"

Misty nodded. "Brill-yont."

I thought about using numbers on my drawing, but who really knows how many basement levels are under The Vatican, or Area 51? And so I designed mine to look like a TiVo remote, with an accompanying monitor that displayed floor information.

Before I had blocked in all the shading and details, Misty reached into the paper, pulling out my creation as if she knew what it was supposed to be. The remote fell to the floor.

She slapped my invention over the elevator control pad, stabbing the door closing button.

When I glanced out, I saw the reason for hurry. Some Minnies had crossed the gap, firing their weapons at us.

The door closed as they were making Swiss cheese out of the shiny back wall.

Misty put her hands on her hips, frowning at my creative display. "How does this work?"

I picked up my remote, scrolling through floors like they were today's hour-by-hour lineup on the Food Network. "Like that."

Wonderful World of Wine.

Epcot Escorts, _and More_.

Mammy's Big Baby Nursery (if they're as big as I imagine - ick).

`Lost Antiquities,' probably lost items that the world has been searching for for decades, but hasn't been rich enough to access. The Ark of the Covenant, now available from The Disney Vault.

World Biodome.

A water reservoir.

Minnie Max Penitentiary.

Twenty floors of R&amp;D and meeting rooms, each described by numbers and vague acronyms.

Mickey's Survival Town, which appeared to be a vast city comparable to that underground facility in _Resident Evil_.

"Do you see the mausoleum yet?" Misty asked.

"Not yet," I said.

Mickey's Library of Congress.

The Disney Vault, Bank and Trust, funds and assets probably not reported to the Federal government.

MCP, apparently Disney's bomb proof computer core.

Administrative offices.

United Nations' Secondary Headquarters.

An atomic `power' facility.

Employee Memorial Center.

Genetics.

More administrative offices.

Everything below this seemed to be mining related. Oil extraction centers and the like.

"I don't see a Merry Mausoleum here," I said. "Are you sure it isn't the Employee Memorial Center?"

"Your guess is as good as mine," Misty said.

I selected the EMC with my remote, then felt my stomach shifting upwards as we dropped dozens of stories beneath the earth's crust.

Misty said nothing, just kept her eyes on the screen of her tablet computer.

I only got halfway to the floor when she yelled "Stop!"

"What? The MCP?"

She frowned at the screen. "No. Above that."

I channel surfed back, sending us up a few floors. "Here?"

Misty nodded.

"Seriously?" I said as I stared at the readout. "That's just where they lock up the DVD's to create an artificial demand for something you can still find on VHS or online for free."

"That's what the readout says!"

"Okay then."

The door slid open, and I found myself staring at a chamber lined with hundreds of steel safety deposit boxes.

"This really doesn't look like a mausoleum to me," I said.

Misty waved her device up and down the rows of locked boxes.

"It's somewhere around here," she said, trying to stare the answers out of the screen.

The place was like a maze, and everything only had a meaningless number designation. I followed Misty around and around to wherever her computer told her, hoping for the best.

Hearing two voices, we all froze.

"_Girlfriend,_" said one lispy sounding one. "Don't paint them red. It'll stand out too much. You want a darker color to go with the dress."

"I guess you're right," said another lispy voice, this one a bit deeper. "I still think it's cute, though."

I was looking at a pair of security guards, and I use that term loosely.

They wore black leather police uniforms, with skirts and heels and blue nylons. They had little leather police hats with mouse ears attached to them. Something to do with the J. Edgar Hoover administration or something, I guessed.

They sat on high stools, at little desks that looked like podiums, giggling as they looked at beefcake pictures and Facebook on their phones. The one to my right was opening a bottle of nail polish.

Misty drew her gun, but I just chuckled and shook my head. The men (I use this term loosely), didn't even notice when the baby started crying.

As we were sneaking past these guards, Misty suddenly gets the nerve to speak to one.

"Excuse me," she said. "Is this the way to the Merry Mausoleum?"

The weirdo didn't even look up from his phone. "_Craig._ Do you know anything a mausoleum? _Sounds kind of_ _spoo-kay_!"

"Girlfriend, you _know_ what the bitch is talking about," said Craig, matter-of-factly. "She's looking for the _Disney_ Disney Vault."

"Oh."

And the two pointed down another long corridor lined with safety deposit boxes.

"Disney Disney Vault?" I repeated. "Are we looking for what I think we're looking for?"

"I guess they have to put the DVD's _somewhere_," Chad said stupidly.

I just groaned and shook my head. "Never mind."

The path was rather clear cut past the fruit stand. The middle aisle led down the rows of lock boxes. You could go down a side aisle and be somewhere else if you wanted, but we didn't.

It was great until we reached another security door.

Misty opened the bug luggage thing, taking out one of those hacker devices with the fake credit card and little computer, you know, like what that kid from the _Terminator_ used to rob those ATM machines. It opened the door in a couple seconds.

"Why didn't you use that before?" I asked. "It would have been a lot easier."

"It was under all the explosives," she said with a shrug.

When the door slid away into the ceiling like something out of a science fiction movie, and I saw the narrow white corridor beyond, I immediately got suspicious. Featureless save for plexiglass plates, sinister looking panels, and cameras, it reminded me of something bad.

"I need to see that sketchpad again."

Misty handed it to me, and I drew a ball, throwing it into the room beyond.

The second it bounced into the middle, a bunch of laser fry slicers popped out of the walls, chopping the object into a grid of finely cut blocks.

Despite being animated, it soon was history, burning into a pile of ash.

Misty gasped in shock. "How did you know?"

"I watch a lot of movies," I said with a roll of my eyes. "Be glad that ball wasn't you."

That's when I got an idea.

Lasers are controlled by mirrors, so I drew us a mirrored box. Me and Misty huddled under it, waddling in like the Trojan horse.

I wanted to bring along Miley, Chad and Misty's boyfriend, using an elaborate sort of mirrored wagon system, but Misty was overcautious about it, even telling our companions to stand clear of the door.

When we reached the door at the opposite end of the tunnel, I felt like I was in the middle of a new _Star Wars_ movie, laser beams and laser cannons blasting all over the place, sparks showering down from the walls and ceiling, machines exploding right and left.

The room went dark.

I heard a door pop open.

The lasers stopped.

"I think the coast is clear," I said, crawling out of the box.

I heard machines whirring, perhaps aiming at me, but they only made sparks when they attempted fire.

I waved the others on through the corridor, urging them to hurry.

The room beyond, unsurprisingly, contained lock boxes.

We marched along the aisle, searching for possible traps.

The trap we encountered was far from the kind I could have logically expected.

For no apparent rhyme or reason, some of the lock boxes just popped open on their own, barfing out rolled up plastic animation cells.

They made a silly sound effect as they unrolled, like when someone in a cartoon lowers a ladder, or Betty Boop pulls down her skirt, then _things started crawling out_.

The first thing I saw were cobras, which wiggled around on the carpet and tried to bite us until Sleezington tied them in knots.

What came next wasn't nearly as easy to dispatch, as they were the size of cars.

They were _tigers_. The realistic, not at all friendly type.

"Lovely," I said. "Now what?"

Misty handed me the sketchbook.

I drew a boom box.

She stared at me as I set the thing on the floor. "What the hell good is that going to do?"

"You'll see," I said.

I pushed the play button, and the narrow chamber filled with the theme song from _Rocky_.

"Disney cartoons can't resist a musical number."

The tigers didn't agree. They just roared.

Right away, I got slammed into a wall full of security boxes, spilling `priceless' DVD's and celluloid frames all over the place, to the tune of _Eye of the Tiger_.

"These guys must have been made from Disney's golden age!" I coughed. "They're immune to song and dance!"

"Let's see if they're immune to bullets," Misty said, pulling out a large elephant poaching gun.

"Wait," I said, getting an idea. "Start...dancing."

"I don't _do_ musicals," Misty growled.

"And I _really really_ respect you for that," I said. "But if these things aren't going to boogie, we're going to have to boogie for them."

Her eyes widened in comprehension. "We'll be invulnerable!"

It was my turn to stare. "We will? Cool!"

I selected _Get the Party Started_ by Pink and started dancing, giving it the Milli Vanilli lip sych treatment.

I had to do it. We were going to die.

I got up in the tigers' faces, hoping all the sexy would distract them enough to let my boyfriend and our bimbo prisoner sneak past.

It _did_ work for a few minutes, but then Misty shot both tigers in the head..._while dancing_, then shot the boom box.

Oh well. Mission accomplished.

We hurried away before anything else could crawl out of the celluloid.

We passed through an archway, and we were standing at a massive gate outside some sort of castle looking thing, framed with giant torches, the bowl shaped kind they always light at the beginning of Olympic games.

"Through that gate!" Misty said, pointing to it.

The moment the words came out of her mouth, I saw a giant green head appear before us.

An oddly familiar head, with slicked down hair and rounded features. At first I thought it was Hugh Beaumont, but then I decided this _was_ _Disney-_land, so I changed my mind.

"Who dares disturb my slumber!" a booming voice yelled as the torches blazed with giant fireballs.

"Thank the guys that took over your company!" I yelled back. "It's no wonder that you're spinning like a rotisserie in your grave!"

The giant head froze, staring at me in silence.

"I don't know which is worse," he said. "Morally corrupt executives thinking they know what my vision is, or idealists who swear they know what it isn't! Maybe I _like_ the Playboy channel, and Ted Turner did me a favor!"

"What you do with your billions of illegitimately earned money is your own business, sir. We're just here for the Spike."

The eyes on the floating head bust with fire.

"_No one takes the Spike!_" he roared, causing the torches to flare up like dragons.

"I'm afraid we are," I said. "Well, not really _afraid_ afraid, since this is basically a gag you stole from the Wizard of Oz, but...you get the idea..."

The head screamed at me.

"Wow Walt," I said. "You sure are pissed for a dead guy. How did you even get this thing to respond to me correctly?"

"It's not a thing!" the giant head shouted. "I am Disney! God of all doodles!"

Misty fired at a cluster or black devices attached to the ceiling, and the giant head faded into nothing, screaming in outrage as it disappeared from sight.

"Hologram," she said.

"`_Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,_'" I quoted.

We pushed the gate inward, and we found ourselves in sort of a crypt.

It _was_ a mausoleum, of sorts. All along the stone walls, I saw the sealed burial compartments, marked with gold and silver plaques, the various members of the Disney family, _and_ Walt's pets.

In the center of all this, on a raised dais, lay some sort of cryogenic machine.

"The rumors were true!" I cried as I ran up the steps.

It looked like the glass coffin from Snow White, except it was hooked to antiquated refrigeration systems, apparently a cryogenic stasis tank. The lack of upgrades told me people really didn't want Walt to come back, they just wanted a piece of his company.

When I scraped the ice off the coffin with an ice scraper someone had helpfully left beside the machinery, I got my first clear look at the body.

The man looked exactly like he did in pictures I saw from 1966, except now he was blue, frosted over like a container of frozen orange juice you've left in the back corner of a freezer and forgotten for a few months.

His chest was glowing.

I scraped over that portion, thinking that Walt, with all his billions, had somehow developed that thing Tony Stark puts in his chest during all those _Iron Man_ movies, but it wasn't that.

"The Spike!" Misty cried as she waved the computer over the coffin. "It's right here!"

She flipped a few latches and broke a lock, throwing the lid open.

A cloud of cold steam rushed out, and we had our first unobstructed viewing of The Waltsicle.

The suited figure lay with its hands by its side, eyes shut, face placid, like your average corpse.

What wasn't average was that it had been staked through the heart. With a glowing spike.

I personally found this more than a little unsettling, but Misty didn't care. She just yanked the object right out of the frozen corpse, as indifferently as one would rip a loose nail out of a piece of sheetrock.

Walt's eyes flew open, red rimmed pupils flashing with indignant rage.

His frozen hands shot out, grabbing me by the shoulders, and , as he pulled me into his box, his mouth cracked open, baring a pair of long glistening canines.


	59. Chapter 59: Ewes Bank

Drew

* * *

Although I worried that Holli might attempt to have her way with me again, this was too important to pass up, so I had no choice but to follow her.

Once inside the suite, she threw me a fuzzy bathrobe for decency. Shocking, I know. I pulled it on as I followed her into the lab.

It appeared as if she had converted a quart of the black slime into club soda. All around, glass containers glowed with liquid that changed as constantly as I did.

Every part of her chemistry set contained some sort of colorful liquid, though generally few with matching colors or timing of reactions.

Burner flasks had pink and aqua colored stuff that flashed black and purple, condenser and filter flasks contained a rotating red-blue that appeared to be permanently marbled, defying laws of diffusion, collector flasks flashed the colors of a stop light, and Erlenmeyers held swirls, checkerboard and polka dotted fluid that turned colors like that of the horse on the _Wizard of Oz_.

Along one wall, I could see a stack of animal cages, each containing a real animal that flickered into a doodle at different times and a different frequency than their neighbor.

"So. _Drew,_" Holli blurted before I could speak. "I noticed you've been getting rather..._close_ with my daughter..."

"Of course," I said. "I just found out she's my sister."

She rolled her eyes. "_We both know there's more to it than that._"

I frowned. "That part was a mistake."

"Then why are you wearing a French Tickler?"

"It's complicated," I said.

"It doesn't seem very complicated to me."

"It doubles as a diaphragm," I said. "And I've been _changing_."

"Was it concave or convex when you were sharing her suite?"

"Both," I groaned. "Look. If you want something, why don't you just come out and say it?"

"Drew, I don't mind you sleeping with her, but I want to know if you're going to _care_ for her."

"Are you serious?" I said. "She takes care of _me_! She's a friggin' superhero!"

"Still, she needs _emotional stability. _Perhaps _economic support_ as well."

I winced. "All right."

"That didn't seem very certain, Drew. I want to know If you're going to _be_ there for her."

"Why wouldn't I?" I said. "_She's family_."

Holli didn't seem satisfied with that answer. "What happens if this cure works and you go back to normal? You'll have no reason to stay here. She'll be all alone, with no one to understand her, and love her, no one to be her companion..."

"She can find other doodles, someone who's not related," I said. "She can be normal."

"That's just the thing, Drew. She doesn't want to be normal."

"Then she can live with me in the real world!" I snapped in annoyance. "She can stay at my place. We'll figure something out!" I paused. "Wait. Did you say `economic support' a moment ago?...You live in a fancy apartment building, and dad's in a mansion."

"Things cost money here, Drew. We don't have an unlimited supply."

"This is a cartoon world. Why can't you just _draw_ the stuff you need?

"Why can't you?" she asked.

"Because I have no artistic talent."

"Neither do I."

She sighed again.

"Look, lady," I said. "I'm not going to abandon my own sister. I'm willing to give her everything she needs. Well, except if it's sexual."

"Why not? That's a need too."

I rubbed my face in disgust. "I can't believe you actually said that."

"You don't need to be ashamed. If you want to sleep with her, it's okay. I just wanted to know if you loved her, and hear you say it with your own mouth."

"Fine," I said. "_I love her_. Satisfied?"

"Yes," she said with a smile. "Very."

I stared at a beaker full of bubbling liquid. "That's the cure?"

Holli nodded. "I can't promise this will be permanent, but it works, which is better than my previous attempts."

She took a rat out of a cage, a rat that looked like a cartoon character made of a fur coat and tanned leather, stroking its head.

"This is Rommel. He was my first successful test subject. I _would_ show you Stalin, but the results were only so-so with that one." She fed it a piece of cartoon cheese, setting it back in its cage.

"I have to say I'm impressed," I said. "Cartoons generally skip the testing stage and go straight to testing the dangerous..._whatever_ on themselves first."

"Yes," she agreed. "Cool World _is_ full of impatient Frankenstein types. I was much more..._careful_ with this one."

"All right," I said. "I guess even if I have to dose myself every day, or month or whatever, it's better than I am now. I'm willing to give it a try."

She handed me a beaker, and I drank.

It was like drinking a cocktail of Alka Seltzer and Thera Flu, laced with bergamot. Very medicinal. Not something you'd want to have on the soda pop aisle, especially considering the viscous fluid that came down your throat afterwards.

"How much do I need to drink?" I said after a few sips.

"The whole beaker," she said.

I shrugged and downed it.

My whole body started glowing, like it did after I had slept with Amanda for the first time. Feeling dizzy, I staggered over to a stool and sat down.

After I waited a few minutes, the glowing subsided, and my original darkly shaded real body solidified. I remained real for five minutes, then ten.

Satisfied that I'd at last found the cure, I shook Holli's hand vigorously. "Thank you. You don't know how much this means to me. I can't thank you enough. I don't know how to begin."

Sighing, she said, "Start by taking care of my daughter."

"I will," I said, completely serious. "Whatever happens, I will."

As she led me to the door, I tugged on the corner of my borrowed bathrobe. "Mind if I keep this?"

She gave me an indifferent shrug.

I marched back to Amanda's suite, never once turning into a doodle.

My sister stared at me when she let me in.

"You look..._different._"

"I think I'm cured," I said. "Holli found something."

Her mouth fell open in shock. "Then we don't need this!"

And she pulls off my French Tickler.

"Please, Amanda," I said. "It's been a long day. I just want to sleep."

She stuck her hands in my bathrobe. "You're a man. A little sex will put you right out."

I pulled the robe shut quickly. "_I really am tired._ Too tired for _that._"

"You've de-animated yourself?" Dane asked with surprise.

I nodded.

She was not impressed. "_Why._"

"Because I want my old life back, okay?"

Dane frowned.

Sneezer started sniffling, and I thought for sure he would blow a hole in the wall.

"You mean...the rat lady is gone?"

I nodded. "Sorry, Sneezer." But I really wasn't sorry at all.

He started crying in the exaggerated way that doodles generally do, weeping buckets and soaking handkerchiefs in a disgusting fashion.

Dane grabbed the mouse and hugged him. "There, there, little guy! I'm sure you'll find another mouse chick somewhere!..._Or maybe some other kind of significant other!_"

"Yeah," said Amanda. "_There's always a chance that Drew's cure won't work..._"

"_I guess every silver lining has its storm cloud,_" I said.

The mouse sniffed and nodded. "You're right. You're absolutely right."

He looked Dane in the eyes. "Do you like mice? Really, really like mice?"

Dane twisted her lip, suddenly looking uncomfortable. "If you're implying what I think you are, I'm not sure I like mice _that much._"

"Can I...try to change your mind?"

She laughed. "_You can try._"

Amanda whispered something to her, but Dane muttered back, "He's cute, but not _that_ cute."

Sneezer didn't try.

"I think he's secretly bisexual," I said.

"So are you," said Amanda.

"That's accidental," I said.

"_Yeah_. You're _accidentally_ bisexual."

I just scowled at her.

"So," she said. "You're human now. What's the plan?"

I sighed. "I don't know if I'm completely cured yet. I'm going to hang around a couple days, see if anything changes. If everything still looks good, I'll go home."

Remembering what I promised Holli, I quickly added, "And take you with me, if you want that."

"Why wouldn't I want that?" she said, giving me a broad smile.

"It's a deal then."

With a sigh, I turned to Dane and said, "Mind if I sleep with you?"

"What!" Amanda cried indignantly.

"I'm a lesbian," Dane blurted.

"Great!" I said. "That's perfect!"

She looked relieved. "Oh. _Sleep_ sleep."

There really wasn't room on Dane's bench, but the floor below was padded, so I curled up there and fell asleep.

When I awoke, I found Dane's arms wrapped around me, her mouth pressed against the nape of my neck, saliva trickling down my back. Her crotch rubbed against me in a way that suggested maybe she wasn't a lesbian, at least unconsciously.

With my eyes half shut, I tried to wiggle out from under her, only to discover a naked back and buttocks sliding up against me from the other side with a soft moan.

Nothing happened, and it was still dark, so I just closed my eyes again. There were worse things than being cuddled by two women simultaneously.

When my eyes opened again, I was alone, and the mouth of a bugle was sticking in my face.

I was blasted with Reveille.

I groaned and sat up, suddenly noticing that a different cat was staring back at me.

Brown, skinny, with a Cheech and Chong headband.

"Hector?"

"Riffraff's busy," the cat said. "And we've got _ourselves_ a very busy day."

I looked around, and saw it was just me and the pathetically optimistic Sneezer. The girls, again, had left me, like they had a sixth sense about things of this nature.

I got dressed and used the bathroom.

The face staring back at me from the mirror was a Parasaurolophus, a stupid looking fin headed dinosaur.

I touched my face, and it felt like my normal face.

Assuming it was a trick mirror, or that my cure had sent my doodle body into Mirror World, I followed Hector out to the Cat-Illac.

At the junkyard, I made eggs Benedict for Riffraff and his friend, them spent most of the morning window shopping for wedding supplies. I'd say `shopping', except I wasn't about to waste money on that, and the bride and groom need to be present at some point.

It seems part of their plans involved me trying on dresses as rat girl, but that was just too bad. I didn't care _that_ much about this wedding.

Deciding enough was enough, I pulled up in front of Ewes Bank and parked.

"What are you doing?" Hector cried. "The junk yard is over on the next street!"

"We need capital," I said, getting out. "If they're not hiring, I'll try the place next door."

"Hey!" he called with a tone of skepticism. "Wait a minute! I thought you were _cured_! Weren't you going to _leave us_ and _go home_ or something?"

"I don't know if I'm fully cured yet," I said. "I'm going to at least have to stick around a day or so."

"I thought a place like this was supposed to be a full time gig! You said no crackpot schemes!"

"What do you know about it, Mr. New Job Every Episode?" I challenged. "_They don't have to know_. Besides, if this cure doesn't pan out, I might actually _need_ to go full time. You've got to plan for every contingency."

The cat rubbed his chin. "Smart..."

They had real pavement, and a real sidewalk leading up to their very real glass and steel building. The Ewes sign was cartoon artwork, but nothing else was. I stared at the meticulously cut lawn, the shrubbery.

I pushed through a glass revolving door, entering a vast high ceilinged room with corian tile floors, leather couches, and a huge horseshoe shaped security desk with a marble counter running around it. A fake doodle sign covered the original metal bank logo. The marble walls were paneled in places with fine polished wood.

Despite being the only visitor in two days, I signed in on a clipboard. A tiny wavy haired black woman in a security uniform looked up from a computer displaying Facebook, squinting at me through her glasses.

"Can I help you?"

I forced a smile. "I'm looking for work."

The woman frowned. "Did you go to the website?"

I rolled my eyes. "No?"

She narrowed her eyes. "You need to _do a search of local job openings and fill out an online application for this region._"

"I don't have the internet," I said. "If you'd look outside, you'd know why."

She shrugged. "Go to a library."

I smacked my face. "We're in the middle of freaking Toon Town! Are you telling me that you have so many applicants for _this region_ that you're forcing them all to go online?"

The face she gave me said yes.

I frowned as I watched an animated sheep in a polo and khakis swipe a badge at a little security turnstile, clopping across the tiles.

I buried my face in my hands and snorted.

My body suddenly felt large and bulky, and when I rubbed my head, I felt it bald except for a long fin. My face had sort of a beak to it, and no nose.

The security guard didn't look surprised at all. She only looked bored, handing me a flat cartoon computer.

"Take this and have a seat," she said with a tone of weary resignation. "Click the home icon and fill out all the forms."

I did what I was told. For some reason, my dinosaur body didn't break the couch.

The computer, although ink and paint, accessed a real looking website. It actually looked like..._the other bank's website_, but the application questions were a little strange in sections.

For instance, below the name, address and phone number, there was a box for "What TV show, movie, comic or video game did you appear in?" and "If you know what a social security number is, and have one of your own, please include it."

After the education and job experience boxes, there was also a box that asked the following question: "Briefly describe the following terms: Credit Card Spending Limit, Late Fee, Membership Fee, Finance Charge, Interest."

I didn't have all the company addresses or the address for my school, but I filled in everything I could, pushing the send button I found at the end of the page.

Unsurprisingly, I experienced no glitches or lagging. It went off in a second.

As I returned the computer, I glanced at the large plasma TV on the wall, doing a double take when I saw what they were showing on MSNBC.

It was Epcot center in Disneyland.

Spaceship Earth, in all its shiny dimpled glory, was rolling free from its moorings. People ran and screamed as the giant silver ball thundered across the Innoventions plaza, crushing everything and everyone in its path.

Explosion rocks Epcot, the caption read.

"What the hell is Jessica doing over there?" I cried.

The program cut to a man and a woman in a studio. A newscaster was interviewing them about the disaster. They claimed it was a "pyrotechnics mishap."

Before I could get any more information, I heard someone saying, "Drew Deebes?"

I spun around and found a small young woman with short brown hair and glasses. White blouse, black vest, slacks. Gold necklace and jade earrings. The look reminded me of a blackjack dealer somehow.

"Uh, hi," I said, unsure if this were the boss or just the secretary. "That's me."

"Follow me," she said, smiling pleasantly.

She led me to a door on the side of the room, well behind the row of security turnstiles, though if you really wanted customer data, you could just climb over the things and get it anyway.

We entered a little board room with a long table and tall padded leather swivel chairs. The walls were a tidy pastel green, bearing only a massive plaque with the real company name on it.

"Wait here," she said, offering me a seat.

I sat down, she left the room, and I waited.

I waited a long time, eventually reverting to my human state.

I slouched in the chair, about to give up, but then the girl returned, accompanied by a tall African American woman in a puff sleeve purple blouse and black leggings. Her face was plump, but not fat, her hair straight and cropped short. When she saw me change into my dinosaur form, she grinned broadly.

These people seemed nice enough. I figured the interview process would be easy.

But then the door comes open again, and in walks _the bird_.

Her coloration was ink black, and animated, the hair and the design of the face familiar in an oddly unsettling way, but she had _horns_, and _glowing eyes_.

Her outfit technically could not be described as business casual, or professional. For the top, she had on sort of a tan-gold polo with red trim, but the collar was high and fan-like, like Dracula's cape, and the shirt cut off at the midriff. Chains crisscrossed her chest like some kind of _Hellraiser_ character, but there was a large gold Star of David medallion securing them around her breasts.

Instead of pants, she wore a tiny skirt of matching color, and she wore elbow length gloves, with chains wrapped around them, and long boots.

Her hair was white, as were her pupil-less eyes.

She pulled up a chair next to the ladies, setting a folder on the table as she cast me a knowing glance.

The moment our eyes met, I knew this was no mere coincidence.

She turned her chair to face me.

"Ahem."


	60. Chapter 60: Newwe Hire

I soon discovered I was not looking at Cupcake's cousin, her evil twin, or an animal version of Storm from the X-Men.

The three females introduced themselves as Bethlynn, Trynice and, you guessed it, _Cupcake._

The situation was awkward at first, but I played it off like I had never met the bird before.

I smiled, shook their hands. "Nice to meet you."

Cupcake took a stack of papers out of her folder, handing a packet to each girl. I could tell it was my application.

They reviewed the information quietly for a few moments, then Bethlynn said, "Wow. It almost looks real!"

"It _is_ real," I said with a frown. "I can't remember everything I was supposed to have on there, but you can Google most of it."

"You came all the way from Las Vegas?" she asked, surprised.

"_All the way?_" I said. "Then where _are_ we exactly?"

"Overland Park, Kansas."

I couldn't exactly disagree with her. Maybe the building _was_ in Kansas, or maybe she got _transported_ from Kansas to this location, so she probably wasn't wrong. Completely.

"So," Trynice said, looking me in the eye. "What made you decide to work here?"

"Well," said. "I'm trying to pay off a car. But that's the funny part. I'm not actually looking for real currency. The car is actually a _painting_, so the only reason I really came here is to get...the kind of money that doodles use.

"I'm a serious guy. I want a job I can do for eight hours a day, five days a week, and get a regular paycheck. I want a job that I can punch in at a certain hour, every day, do something boring but necessary, and get paid for it."

"Sounds good," Bethlynn said. "But I think you'll have to ask our Doodle Ambassador about the money."

Cupcake grinned. "I'm sure we can accommodate your request, provided you qualify."

"Is that the only reason you want to work here?"

I shrugged. "I've done a number of customer service type jobs. I know how to handle people, and how to make deals, and I think there's something enjoyable about it. I think it would be easier than, say, trying to win a million dollars at a pie eating contest or something."

Trynice nodded. "I noticed...you didn't dress up for the interview..."

I rubbed my face in frustration. "I wish I could have, but it's not easy in this place. I had some cartoon dress up clothes, but they're a little unpredictable. I put stuff in the pockets, and they're gone."

"Speaking of which," she said. "Forgive me for mentioning it, but your appearance is..._unusual_. It seems you're not a doodle, but you turn into one from time to time. Care to explain?"

No, I definitely didn't care to explain, but they put me on the spot.

"It was an accident," I said, which technically was a half truth.

"_An accident,_" Trynice repeated, sounding skeptical.

"What kind of accident?" Bethlynn asked.

"_It's complicated,_" I answered.

"It was a sexual accident," said Cupcake.

I sighed, raising my hands defensively. "Look. If you guys don't want to hire me, tell me to get lost."

"Relax, Drew," Bethlynn said.

"Yeah," Trynice added. "It's against the law to discriminate based on sexual orientation."

I stared at the two in horror. "You just made it sound worse."

Then, after another embarrassed silence, I said, "I'm glad you don't discriminate against my..._orientation._"

Bethlynn glanced at the application. "It says here you worked at _Encore..._"

I stared at her. "You've heard of it?"

She nodded. "I used to work there."

"_It's been awhile,_" I said. "That's probably why I don't recognize you. Sorry about the addresses, by the way. I'm stuck in Cool World, so I can't get to my stuff."

"We can look up the information," Bethlynn said.

"What impresses us is that you know what these places are, and actually filled out the application the way you were supposed to, complete with social security number," Trynice said.

"It's what I do."

Cupcake's folder had been closed, but now she opened it again, taking out one of those retinal scanner/camera things they had in _Blade Runner_, which she set up in front of my chair. I guess Hammerspace was linked to the folder, or something.

Trynice opened a little memo pad, reading from the first page.

"Are you willing to work eight hours a day, five days a week, and stick to that schedule indefinitely?"

"Yes," I said. I was human, so I assumed it couldn't pick up half truths.

"A man calls in, saying he just lost his wife to prostate cancer. He said he doesn't think he can afford the minimum payments now that he's down to one income. What do you do?"

"Is the man gay?" I asked.

Cupcake furrowed her brow in puzzlement, but didn't speak.

"Yes," Trynice said.

I sighed. This kind of situation was something I'd never have to face in Cool World. It definitely _was_ real.

"I guess...I'd ask a supervisor if there were any special programs we could put him on," I said, feeling a little disgusted. "Is that really going to come up on a day to day basis?"

She didn't answer. She just read the next question.

"A credit card is free money, and when it stops allowing you to buy things, it's your right to not make any more payments until it starts working again."

I laughed. "Sure. Tell that to the credit bureau."

"A woman is upset. She wants to buy her children gifts for Christmas, but she is over her account spending limit, and behind on two payments. She said that her car just broke down and is in need of a lot of repairs, and she just lost her job. What do you say?"

I'd seen a few trick questions like this before. The key is the emotional resolution, rather than the solution.

"Um, gee, I'm sorry to hear that you lost your job and have all those expensive repairs to make. I hope you can figure something out."

"The woman is now upset, because we denied her spending limit increase, saying that her children will not have Christmas this year."

I shrugged. "I'd tell her sorry, ma'am, but it has been determined that we are unable to increase your spending limit based on your credit. If you disagree with the reporting, you can take it up with the bureaus. Either that, or I'd recommend covering a few missed payments to help free up some capital and make an increase more likely."

"But it's Christmas!" Cupcake protested.

I rolled my eyes. "A credit card is not a charity. It is a _loan_. The company eventually wants the money back. If more people didn't spend beyond their means like that, collection agencies would be a lot less busy. They're not doing themselves any favors, either." I paused. "Wait. Aren't you Jewish?"

Cupcake reddened. "You're right. You're absolutely right. _ Mostly._"

I didn't ask for an explanation. I just stared at her.

"You're hired," said Trynice.

I stared at her in bafflement. "That's it?"

"Yeah," the woman said. "You know how hard it is to find a cartoon person who gets all that?"

"Training class should still be in session," Bethlynn said. "I'll show you to the room."

She passed me through a turnstile, leading me down a wide hallway with a tile floor. It was strange to see a matte painting beyond the glass fire exit door at the far end, an element of bizarre in a completely boring setting. A big woman in shorts snored on a couch along the wall, paying me no attention.

I was led into something that looked like a college classroom. An auditorium with rows of desks and computers and phones, surrounding an instructor's desk and a markerboard. Along the back of the room, I saw large windows with Venetian blinds. The blinds were closed, probably due to all the distractions.

The desks were largely occupied by animated sheep, though I saw a horse, and a squirrel as well.

A short bearded man in argyle, with glasses and well combed hair stood in front of the class, teaching them about finance charges.

"If the balance is six hundred, and you have an APR of fifteen percent, what will be your next regular minimum payment?" he asked.

He received a mixed reaction. Some of the sheep just stared blankly, some poked buttons on calculators, scratching their heads.

I picked up a calculator from one of the desks, did the math, and told him ninety six dollars.

The man snorted in annoyance, then, when he realized I'd given the answer, he whirled around to face me. "Hello? Who are you?"

"This is Drew Deebes," said Bethlynn. "He's your new student. Drew, this is Pete Garrotte. He'll be your new training manager."

Pete gazed at me for a moment, then laughed, and somewhat nervously I thought. "Oh thank God! An actual human being for once! Front row, please."

I marched around the desks.

"Anywhere's fine."

We worked on APR calculations and such for several minutes. I knew what I was doing, so he had me helping the others out.

I watched with amusement as Pete scolded a horse as it tried to figure out answers by tapping its hooves on the desk.

"Don't do that. It'll ruin the finish."

We learned how to use a program called SeQual next, a very basic graphics oriented type of program designed to allow employees to do the most basic tasks assigned to them, without letting them step outside those boundaries.

Boring, straightforward, simple. My fellow trainees refused to stop calling it Squeal.

Then we had practice transferring calls.

Easy stuff. Type in an extension, push a button, right?

Well, some of the other `agents' literally transferred _themselves_ through the phone.

"Don't do that!" Pete said when he caught a second sheep's head popping out of the receiver of another sheep's phone.

You would have thought that, since I kept out of trouble and did what I was told, only occasionally turning into a doodle maybe once an hour, the instructor would have gone easy on me, but he tended to scold me when I tried to skip ahead of the class. He appeared to be the `Bell Curve' type of educator.

I guess he didn't think of me as highly as I imagined, he just appreciated the fact I didn't pop my head through the phone, or smashed the place up with a giant hammer or something.

Whatever, I thought. I went along with the lesson like I was a total novice, hoping someone would figure it out sometime.

At the end of class (lunch break, actually), it seemed the sheep needed other things explained to them, since that's when Pete informed them all that money is distributed in the form of a weekly paycheck.

The sheep marched out, leaving me and the trainer in the room.

He was friendly for all of that condescension, or maybe just desperate for someone normal to talk to. Normal-ish.

"So," he said. "Nevada. That's a _long way_ from Kansas City."

I was annoyed to hear that comment again, even from someone else, but I humored him.

In case you're wondering, we did chat a couple times during class.

"You know, I used to live in Fargo. Sometimes it got so cold up there that you could actually throw a pot of boiling water into the air, and have it come down as snow."

Remember that story. It will be on a test later.

"_That sounds pretty cold_," I agreed.

"I'm still trying to figure something out. How did you get all the way over here? _Did you fly?_"

"I'm not sure what happened," I said. "I was in Cool World, and your office building just appeared out of nowhere."

"_Cool World._ Cupcake has told me a few things about the place, but I really haven't gone out very far. I tried walking around the block, but it got dangerous. Things were exploding."

"It's definitely unsafe," I said. You got to know something about cartoons, or you're in trouble, and sometimes even that doesn't help."

He frowned. "Why do you sometimes turn into a dinosaur?"

"I fell into something called a Miasma Pool," I lied, pulling something out of _Final Fantasy_. "It does weird things to you."

Pete sighed. "I just want to go home. I've got a wife and kids. They're worried sick."

"Why don't you try calling them?" I said.

He looked pained. "I _do_, but how can I explain this without looking like a nut?"

"I know the feeling," I groaned. "I'm kind of stuck here myself."

"I think my kids would love it."

After an awkward silence, where neither of us could think of what to say, Pete said, "Do you know of any good restaurants around here?"

I only shrugged. "It all pretty much tastes like cardboard, no matter where you go, and you probably got to use cartoon currency, unless you meet someone super nice."

"Anything's better than Company Kitchen," he said. "It's extortion."

"Company what?"

He showed me the little self service convenience store they had on the property, monitored by cameras and nothing else.

Honor system. You scanned the bar codes from sandwiches and snacks and pop at a machine and swiped your credit card.

It was expensive. Twice as much as you'd pay at Quicktrip, which of course, means it was _really, really_ expensive.

"So what have you been doing about sleeping arrangements?" I asked.

"Well, we kind of just lay our coats down and sleep on the floor. A few of us have inflatable rafts from an incentive contest. Some lay on those, but mostly the floor. Cupcake's supposedly having some little birds come in to build us nests, but the idea sounds kind of sketchy to me."

"I'm surprised she hasn't at least given you bird seed or suet cake or something."

Pete laughed. "She suggested it, but nobody took the idea seriously. Is that what people live on around here?"

"Sometimes," I said. "If you're desperate enough."

Another silence. I frowned at the high priced food.

Pete scanned a sub sandwich and paid for it. "See you back in class in about..." He checked his watch. "Twenty minutes."

The moment he left, I found myself getting slammed into the gray wall next to the chip racks. A black scantily clad bird glared at me with its glowing eyes.

"So..." I stammered. "Uh, great to see that you're all right after that trip to the Nether Region or Dark Dimension or whatever it's called."

"_Shadow Realm_," she said. "You should know. You had me trapped in there for ten long years."

I sighed. "It wasn't nearly that long. Honestly. My, um, _second job_ would fire me if I was gone that long."

"Time passes differently in the Shadow Realm," she said in a threatening tone. "An hour outside the Shadow Realm is equal to a year inside."

"I think that would actually make it _less than ten years_, based on when we put you there, but I'll take your word on that. Unless you meant one year passes for every thirty minutes..."

I guess, like that water planet in that Christopher Noland movie about the astronaut, time passed a lot quicker in that place.

Her hands clamped around my throat, her beak clamped down to a small slit as she spoke the next words.

"For ten long years," she growled. "I wandered the Shadow Realm, subsisting on fungus and dead bodies, hiding in the darkness, killing to survive. Do you know what was the single thought that kept me alive all this time?

"The sole motivation for me to keep going?

"The motivation for which I lived and died?"

I swallowed. "Uh, your desire to murder everyone I care about, and torture me until I die horribly?"

She grabbed me by the collar, kissing me passionately.

"Guess again."

I paled. "Oh my God. Seriously?"

She grabbed my chin with her feathery hand. "I admit I _did_ hate you at first, for leaving me in that place to die, at least that first month.

"But then, as I wondered day after day in that desert wasteland, a terrible loneliness gripped me, and as I lay all alone, masturbating in a sleeping bag I'd fashioned from the skins of dead Shadow Beasts, I thought only of _my king_, and the great _kindness_ he showed my people."

"Oh God," I groaned. "Please tell me you're kidding."

She shook her head. "For a decade, I have fantasized, _dreamed_ about the day I'd take you home, to be the first _being_, the first..._noiddle_ to warm my nest."

"Noiddle?" I said.

"Part noid, part doodle," she explained. "I've had a lot of time to think about it. It sounds better than `noodle' or `dooid.'"

Frowning, I said, "_To think, I was about to question your statement about being a virgin._"

She grabbed the seat of my jeans and kissed me. "_There's an easy enough way to fix that..._" she purred.

I pushed away her kissing mouth. "Look, Cupcake. You're cute, and maybe we share similar business interests, but let's take things slow. Get to know each other a little first. It's lunch time. How about we sit down somewhere together and chat?"

She looked somewhat disappointed, but nodded, giving me a warm smile. "Anything for my king."

I grabbed an Italian sandwich, running it across the scanner on the kiosk. My mouth was watering with the idea of eating real food for once, expensive or not.

Since I was still non-animated, I didn't have to worry about Hammerspace for the moment. I took my wallet out of my pocket, swiping my debit card.

Insufficient funds, the screen said.

Thinking it was a mistake, I ran it again.

Insufficient funds.

I cursed under my breath. Even though I paid ahead on my rent, I had left a hundred in there for situations like this. The small sum wouldn't have prevented my eviction, so I had left it alone.

I stared at the screen, still puzzling over what had happened, trying to remember some transaction, any transaction, that would have put me in the red.

I got so mad that I marched up to Cupcake and said, "Do you know where I can have access to a computer? Something's wrong with my bank account, and I want to know what it is, or who just used it without my permission."

She looked delighted. "_Oh I think I know just the place_," she said in a sing-song voice.

She led me out and down the hall, beneath a wide angular spiral staircase to one of their brass plated elevators.

As the elevator rose, we both were silent for a moment.

"So," I said. "That's an interesting look you've got now."

"When you say interesting," she breathed. "Do you mean sexy?"

I swallowed. "Let's...start with interesting, and see where we go from there."

And then, to not make it sound insulting, "You're cute. I'm willing to say that much."

I changed the subject fast. "What did you _do_ in this Shadow Realm? Besides masturbate? What was it like there?"

I guess I was hoping that she would be reminded of why she hated me.

"It's a lot of rock desert and hostile vegetation. A lot of dust storms. The plants and fungus really _change you_. I could take you there sometime, if you want..."

I cringed. "No thanks."

She ran her fingers down her horns. "You like them? I think they're very distinct."

"Uh, yeah. They're neat." I sighed. "Did you...meet any other birds there?"

She giggled. "Not any that I'm interested in, if that's what you're getting at. A lot of super large weird looking ones, twice as big as me, or little tiny desert birds, few of them knowing English. They don't hold a candle to you."

I smiled uncomfortably. "I'm...gratified to hear that, I guess."

The elevator came open at an upper floor, and we walked through a call center with ceiling to floor windows, and row upon row of upholstered particle board cubicles.

At the corner of this impressive floor, she led me into a little meeting room, one with a long polished mahogany table, a computer set up at its far end, and a swivel chair with its back to a large window.

She ushered me to the seat, and when I got in and scooted myself up to the table, she leaned over me, pressing her breasts against me as she helped me log into the desktop.

I pretended to ignore this, focusing on the task at hand.

I pulled up my bank website, logged in, and read my statement.

My account was seventy five dollars in the red.

I had two new unauthorized eighty seven dollar purchases from Amazon. Some company named Sweatshopkukooclocks dot com.

This transaction was processed _before_ the landlord had decided to cash my rent check. As a rule, they don't cash it the moment you put it in the night drop, they wait a few days.

The rent check was _pending_, not _processed_.

It was going to _bounce_.

It was likely they would evict me, since people in real life do not do reasonable things like cashing _only the valid part_ of a large check.

Evicted. For two damn kookoo clocks.

Although I hadn't wanted her to, Cupcake had been looking at my bank statement with me. I let it pass because it was her computer, she as animated, and I was very upset about the fraud.

"Is something the matter?" she asked.

"Yeah. I'd say so," I growled, pointing at the items. "I didn't do that."

"It does seem..._a little out of character._"

I let out a heavy sigh. "_Kookoo clocks_. That's...a weird coincidence."

Cupcake frowned at the screen. "What makes you think this is one?"


	61. Chapter 61: Transcendence

Jessica

* * *

I screamed and pushed the frozen animation legend, but his icy fingers refused to let go.

Cartoony thoughts, I told myself. Think cartoony thoughts.

I started singing _Pressure Drop_ by Toots and the Maytals.

Walt didn't sing along with me, probably because it was after his time, but he did give me a zombie-like "Huh?" and I somehow escaped his clutches by turning into the rodent mascot for my design company, about a foot shorter than my regular self.

I backed away, but he climbed out of his coffin to chase after me.

All the sealed burial compartments started rattling like there was an earthquake going on, and, judging by all the explosives we set off upstairs, I wasn't a bit surprised.

Of course, my second guess was that Uncle Walt was unleashing some sort of terrible demonic power, like he had The Bloodstone or was experiencing The Quickening or something.

I kind of wanted to hang around and see what kind of destruction he was capable of, but I really didn't want to get my blood sucked by some old man.

Misty pulled out a gun and shot him a couple times, but he was a vampire, so it didn't do anything.

Worse, when I turned to run, she screamed and turned into a skeleton as lightning bolts lit up her body.

She fell to the floor unconscious.

It was hard to check the vitals on a cartoon, but I assumed she was still alive because she hadn't turned into a blackened cinder.

I picked her up and tried to drag her out the door, but that's when I saw Mickey and his Minnies blocking the way with their assorted weaponry.

"It has been a long time since my corporeal form has feasted on human flesh," Mickey said, his voice dropping to a deeper, more masculine tone, the voice of a heavy smoker.

I gave him a nervous laugh. "You all right, Mickey? You don't seem to be acting like yourself!"

"This _is_ my real self," he said. Then, gesturing to the vampire. "By all means, re-acquaint yourself."

"No thanks," I answered. "I'm good."

His smug demeanor dropped. "Hand over the Spike."

While rescuing Misty, I had somehow managed to pocket that spike in my bikini, despite it not actually having pockets. Hammerspace, I guess.

"What use it to you?" I asked.

"Use!" he cried indignantly. "_What use! _How about transferring the human consciousness into an animated entity! _The Spike! Give it to me!_"

I stared at him in astonishment. "You transferred your consciousness into Mickey Mouse."

Mickey looked uncomfortable, like he may have had a few regrets about the decision. Maybe.

"I was dying of lung cancer, and I was surrounded by nothing but images and films of Mortimer, excuse me, _Mickey_. The Spike was my only hope. A scientist friend sent it to me via courier. By the time it arrived, I was on my deathbed.

"The Spike brought my creation to life, but it did nothing to save _mine. _I made a phone call to the professor, but he knew nothing that could help me.

"That's when I remembered how one of my child actors, Kurt Russell said that his mother was a witch/spiritualist. I made a call to her right away, begging her for any possible means to prolong my life.

"It was Louise who suggested using it as a stake. The only problem was the damn doodle refused to do it.

"But a child...neither one of us could resist the draw of a child..."

"Kurt Russell stabbed you in the chest with the Spike!" I finished with a laugh. "That's awesome!"

"It will be more awesome when you return what is rightfully mine."

"I can't let you do that," said a gruff voice behind them.

I glanced back, and there he was. R. J. Macready himself.

He was aged, wearing a beard and en eyepatch. He would have been rather heroic looking, had he not also been wearing a pink t-shirt from some breast cancer rally. I guess...you could probably still call that heroic.

In his hands, he gripped an industrial blowtorch.

The Minnies spun around, pointing their guns at him.

"I wouldn't do that, Kurt." Mickey said. "Right now, you have a favored place in my Magic Kingdom. Don't spoil a good thing by being an asshole."

"There's no point," he said, arming the igniter on the flamethrower. "You already beat me to it."

Then he blasted Mickey in the face.


	62. Chapter 62: Cube

Mickey, being animated, was immune to fire, but you probably guessed that already.

Kurt seemed to know this as well, for as the mouse screamed, writhing from a strange combination of real and animated flames, the man kicked Mickey in the chest, stomping him to the floor.

The Minnies, upon turning their weapons on the aging film star, suddenly realized they were only holding the Nerf collection.

You see, like any good villain, the mouse talked overlong, and while he jabbered, rather fascinatingly, about his life's story, Misty and Sleez had used their cartoon powers to do the old switcheroo. They pelted Mr. Russell with foam darts.

Kurt marched over the prone mouse body, rushed to the middle of the chamber, and gave Mickey's real body a liberal dose of fire.

Funny thing, expansion. A door that's normal in the winter will sometimes swell and refuse to open in the summer, and a glass of water, frozen in dry ice, will break when dropped in a pot of boiling water.

When Walt expanded, it was _amazing_.

It was like someone shoved an M80 inside a Cornish game hen and lit the fuse. Walt's head, limbs, and frozen gizzards went flying everywhere.

"Ciao, Mickey Mouse!" Kurt spat.

A moment later, the rumbling earthquake got stronger, and the mausoleum compartments started cracking open.

I saw a rotting foot kicking open one of the broken concrete seals. A growling dog snout, one that was mostly bone, nosed open another.

"We need to go," Kurt said. "Unless you'd like to perform _Thriller._"

I chuckled. "I admit that _does _sound fun..."

The man picked up Miley Cyrus, throwing her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, running out into the castle courtyard.

I hadn't paid much attention to this detail, but there was a smaller door near the giant one, behind one of the giant torches. We all ran through this door, hurrying down a crumbling stone spiral staircase identical to the one they show on every _Tales From the Crypt_ episode.

After crossing through what appeared to be the actual Cryptkeeper set, we entered a white corridor, and I flinched, fearing another laser fry slicer.

"Relax," Kurt said, unzipping a dufflebag he'd been carrying with his other arm. "This room is safe. The ones past her, those are the ones you should really worry about."

Atthe end of this room, we neared a wall, covered with a grid crisscrossed with neatly arranged asterisk patterns.

Kurt stared at his watch for an entire minute, then marched ahead.

The wall abruptly slid away, and he was climbing into a large cube shaped room.

"Hurry!" he shouted to me and my companions. "It'll move soon!"

And so I jumped in.

The room was a perfect cube, the same length along the walls, floor and ceiling, and each of those surfaces was patterned with the same looking grid/asterisk design, backlit by a pale eerie light.

At dead center of the roof, floor, and all four walls, there was a square opening, through which you could either climb, drop, or even jump, if you could manage to jump high enough to go up.

"Hey!" I said. "I've _seen_ this movie! You've got through it by using prime numbers, right?"

"No," Kurt answered. "I actually got through it by throwing plush toys and Googling the score to _When You Wish Upon A Star_." He pointed to a music note on the wall.

"If you know the pattern," I said. "Why do you need the stuffed toys?"

"Cel phone reception is shit down here. I'm lucky to get two bars."

I stared into the bag. "Still, it looks like you've got a few left..."

Looking depressed, he said, "I came here with six bags."

With those inspiring words, he dug out a plush version of that crab from _Little Mermaid_, hurling it through one of the openings.

The moment the toy went through, I saw a thousand razor tipped metal rods shoot out of the walls, slicing Sebastian into a cloud of cotton stuffing and ripped fabric.

Kurt glanced at the opening to his left, then looked at the opening to the right before turning around and facing the direction we came in.

He pointed. "That way."

"But that's the way we came in!" I protested.

"_I know,_" he said with a tone of resignation.

A second later, we were staring at a wall.

No more entrance.

The room had moved.

We were now trapped in _Hypercube_.

"Please tell me your phone is still charged."


	63. Chapter 63: Disclosure

Drew

* * *

I Googled the clock company to see if they truly were "What it says on the tin" and found out they called it "Sweatshop" because the guy worked really really hard.

I suppose, if this were the fault of Miss Terious, she was too dumb to figure out how to get clocks made with real sweatshop labor.

The only online complaints I could find about this place were that they're not genuine Swiss clocks, they're Hungarian, they never gave refunds, and the guy was notorious for processing payments with insufficient credentials, i.e., allowing people to make too many attempts at generating their own false expiration dates and CVV codes until they "got it right."

If they said the billing address was for Texas and the account holder lived in Ohio, they didn't care. In fact, if a bank rejected a pending charge due to a wrong billing address, they'd simply search the internet for the "right address" and run it again. Federal law couldn't legally force them to give refunds, so they never did.

Amazon seemed to turn a blind eye to all of this, since the online `bookstore' was an international company and all their call centers were in India or the Phillipines, where the law was sketchy, and customer service reps could pretend to not understand English as they politely gave you the runaround.

I could still dispute the charge with my bank, but there was one forseeable problem with doing this: If I actually _got_ the kookoo clocks, I couldn't say I hadn't received goods and/or services, and they would be skeptical about any sort of fraud _that involves products being shipped to my apartment_.

Even if they were shipped to the guy next door, I'd have a chance at disputing it. It would make no sense for someone to ship things fraudulently to my apartment, unless they worked in the leasing office, _and could take them out of my mailbox_. Who in their right mind would believe _that_ story?

Cupcake had seated herself on the table top next to the computer, legs spread, one hand drawing up part of her skirt. Blue panties, white trim.

"Can you...dispute the charges?" she asked.

I admit I was a little flustered by her antics. "Uh, yeah. I mean, _no_, not unless I go back to my world and visit the bank." I sighed. "And doing that isn't exactly easy."

"You can't do it by phone?"

I laughed. "You work for a bank and you ask me _that_?"

She looked like she sincerely didn't know.

Rolling my eyes, I said, "The only fraud dispute you can do by phone is shutting off your debit card. You have to physically fill out a bundle of paperwork and mail it, which can take weeks, sometimes months, _or_ go into a bank and do it there, which generally takes a little less time. I personally need to get this done fast to keep my apartment."

I gestured to the computer. "I'm done. Want me to shut this off?"

She shoved it aside. "I'll take care of it."

"Thanks," I said. "You've been pretty decent about this whole thing."

Truthfully, her suggestive behavior wasn't exactly decent, but I didn't say anything because, well, maybe I didn't mind so much.

She scooted in front of me, spreading her legs wider.

"Can I ask you something, Drew?" she said.

Squirming a little, I answered, "Okay?"

"I haven't seen you transform any. You were a dinosaur for a couple minutes, but you're mostly human. Why is that?"

"I've found a cure," I said.

She chuckled. "You act as if being a doodle is a bad thing."

Sighing, I said, "I just want my normal life back."

"Normal is boring."

"Maybe I _like_ boring."

"Sometimes I like boring too," she said with a smirk. "Why a dinosaur? Among my people, you turned into a bird. This is Ewes Bank. Why not a sheep?"

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe it's part of the cure?"

For a few seconds, I turned into a sheep and bleated. Cupcake laughed.

She placed a hand on my makeshift bandage. "Is it healing any?"

"Probably not," I said.

She kissed me. "_My noble king._"

And then she grabbed my hand, drawing along her upper thigh.

I pulled my hand away. "Stop."

As much as I hate to say it, the thought of fraud on my account and getting kicked out on the street was kind of a turn-on. After all, this _was_ a terrific failure.

Being seduced by a shapely cartoon bird only added to the already existing frustration and sexual confusion.

"What's wrong," she said, easing herself down onto my pants.

"I just showed you what's wrong!" I snapped.

I shoved her back up on the table.

Cupcake planted her boots on the armrests of my chair, showing me her wares. I noted the blue underwear was exactly the same color her skin used to be.

_"Is there anything I can do to help?"_

I grabbed her knees, pulling her legs together. The way she shuddered when I touched her, you would have thought I were running my hands down her breasts.

Pretending not to notice this, I said, "You think you can get your little birdies to carry me over to Holli Would's apartment?

"Ahem."

She stood up on the table, arched her back, and bat wings exploded from her body, paring down her clothing in the process.

Her top and miniskirt burst open, becoming part of the wings' tan underside, the chains snapping across the stretched out leather folds, leaving her in a robin's egg colored bra and panties.

"How about one big bird?"

I swallowed. "_That'll work."_

But as she hopped down from the table, I suddenly realized the problem with this whole endeavor.

"Wait," I said, getting up. "How's this going to work? I'm barely into the first day of training. I can't just skip out, can I?"

She pushed me into the table, touching her beak to my lips.

"They trust me here, and I'm a quick study. I'll show you the ropes, _and then some._"

"I've heard that workplace relationships don't work," I stammered.

"Well, if we have a problem," she breathed. "I'll just fire you and keep you on as a _consultant._"

This did nothing to decrease the awkwardness of the situation.

"Shall we go?"

Like most office buildings, the majority of the ceiling to floor windows at Ewes Bank didn't actually open, but this didn't stop Cupcake. She just pulled a knob out of her bra, stuck it on the glass, and she had an instant casement.

As she pushed it outward, I saw the door to the room crack open, and a yellow feathery head poked in.

"Did somebody call me?"

The creature limped in.

It had on a neck brace, a leg in a cast, and his wing in a sling. I guess it's hard to write off a doodle once they're relatively popular.

"My apologies," Cupcake said. "I meant to say _`large bird.'_"

Big Bird looked disappointed. "Very well, my queen. Are you certain there isn't any service I can perform for your majesty?"

"Thank you, Big Bird," Cupcake said. "But no. You should really rest up until your injuries heal."

Big Bird frowned. "Yes, your highness."

And then he nods at _me_. _"My king."_

The fowl waddled away with his head down.

Sort of. He had a neck brace, you know.

Cupcake led me to the window. "Do you trust me?"

I swallowed. I really hadn't had any reason _not_ to trust her. All she wanted to do was get into my pants.

"Yeah..." I almost said, "With most things" or "With my life," but they both sounded awkward and dangerous, so I just nodded and said yeah again.

She stepped out the window, hopping onto a cloud.

Then she beckoned to me.

"Seriously?"

Her glowing eyes narrowed. "Do you trust me or not, Drew!"

I sighed, taking the first trembling step toward the pane.

A weird voice nearly startled me headfirst into the parking lot.

"Did somebody call me?"

Glancing back, I saw a big blue green avian creature that looked suspiciously like the guy that had just left.

"I'm _Large Bird._"

I groaned. "Uh, no. We're good."

I turned to face the bird on the clouds, who was still waving me over.

"You want me to jump over?" I said.

She shrugged. "Unless you can _grow your own wings and fly over_!"

"Is it safe?" I asked.

In response, she did an erotic stripper type dance on the cloud.

"All right," I said. "But I'm going to be mad if I fall down and die."

"I thought you trusted me," she said with a pout.

"All right," I said nervously. "All right. Fine. I trust you."

Singing _Round and Round_ by Ratt in attempts to protect myself against the inevitable fall, I leapt from the window, turning into a shovel beaked Parasaurolophus as I did so.

I fell.

Cupcake swooped down and caught me as I dropped past the first floor, grunting with the effort of lifting my large saurian form.

A creepy looking gargoyle turned its head, grinning at my escort. "Hey, hot mama!" he said in a weirdly distorted voice. "Why don't you _drop this dweeb_ and hang out with _me _for awhile?"

I supposed the wings and horns were a big turn on for him.

"No thanks," Cupcake said. "I don't date architectural features."

Once up on the cloud, I relaxed somewhat, turning human again.

I allowed Cupcake to press her body against my back, feigning nonchalance as she wrapped her arms around me, placing her hands on my chest.

Her wings flapped, and we were off, soaring across the idealized cartoon landscape.

"There. That's not so bad, is it?" she breathed in my ear.

I didn't want to say yes, but it wasn't that bad, either.

"Um," I stammered. And that's all I could manage.

She giggled. "It's the big twisty building with the eye on it, right?"

"Yeah," I said. "How did you know?"

Cupcake laughed. "Drew. Think about what you just said."

I grimaced. "_Oh that's right_. Tell me. What's your national baby farm going to say about us sleeping together?"

She nearly dropped me in surprise. I think she must have interpreted this as "Let's go to town right now."

"They're very open about it," she eagerly gushed. "Of course, storks don't deliver most bird babies. _ You lay them yourself_." Then she purred, "_What's your baby farm going to say about us sleeping together.._.It's almost like something you'd say _after_ _you did it. Or immediately before._"

I gulped. "I was being hypothetical. I meant `if' we slept together, what would they say."

"Three quarters of the company would say, `was it as good for you as it was for me?'"

"I'm...assuming...you mean that you're three quarters of the company?"

"Uh-huh."

As if I wasn't already uncomfortable enough.

"_What's your baby farm going to say..._" she kept repeating under her breath.

Cupcake knew exactly where to go. In seconds, we were at my sister's window.

The trouble was, the window was locked from the inside.

I knocked several times before anyone opened up.

I was greeted by Dane, still dressed in her crazy costume.

"You're back early!" she said.

When she saw my companion, she burst out laughing. "I see you've got a new girlfriend!"

"_Not as new as you might think,_" Cupcake said. _"Miss...Kookoo."_

Dane raised her hands defensively, eyes wide, her mouth hanging open in shock. "That was a joke! I _hate_ kookoo clocks! Honest!"

"May we come in?" Cupcake said.

Dane waved us in, looking visibly nervous.

"I dig the new look," she said as Cupcake folded down her wings, fastening her clothing articles back into their original positions. "It's badass."

"Thank you," the bird said with a smile.

"I agree," I said. "It _is_ cool."

She blushed a little, tugging her shirt collar open wider. "_I am happy to please my king._"

Dane giggled. "You made a good choice, _your highness._"

I glanced around, but didn't see my sister. "Where's Amanda?"

Dane shrugged. "She went down to some strip club. She said she was going to help you pay off the car."

I sighed. "I hate to say it, but that actually sounds like a plan."

I frowned. "Look. I'm going back to the real world. It's only going to be for a few hours. Someone did fraud on my bank account and I need to fix that so I don't get evicted. You want to come along?..._You don't exactly belong here..._"

"No way," Dane said, her face completely serious. "I'm never leaving here. _Ever_!" And then, after a pause, "Okay, maybe if I really really had to, but you'd have to have a damn good reason."

Sneezer's head popped out from behind a curtain. "I'll go!"

I rolled my eyes. "That's pretty much a given."

And then I did a double take. "How did you know I'd be here?"

"A little bird told me," he said.

Extra popped out of the mouse's pocket. "Sorry, master."

Groaning, I stepped out the door, into the hallway.

The Bird Queen followed me.

"Look, Cupcake," I said. "I really don't think you should come with me. I'm going to the _real world_. People will stare. There could be a problem."

"You're letting the _mouse_ go..." she pointed out.

"Well, yeah," I said. "But Sneezer follows me around whether I want him to or not."

Sneezer nodded. "And it pays off. Sometimes he turns into rat woman and gives me passionate kisses. In fact, last night, _we almost scored._"

Cupcake grinned. "Then I _have_ to come along. After all, _someone has to sign off on this manager approved company activity._"

That made it even more horrible.

"Fine," I said. "If you want to come along, you can. I guess I owe you."

"Notice how he didn't disagree," Sneezer said. "_About the scoring._"

Cupcake smiled broadly. "_I noticed!_"

Trying not to think about all this, I hurried over to Holli's place, knocking on her cardboard door.

A slender goat in a white dress opened it.

"I'm afraid there's been a problem with the formula."


	64. Chapter 64: Hello Dolly

"What kind of problem are you having with the formula?" I asked. "It can't be any worse than randomly turning into a doodle for a second, can it?"

"Actually, yes," she said. "It _can_ be worse."

Then she bleated in goat fashion.

"I've been like this for an hour. It's stable, but in the wrong way."

"How long do I have?" I asked.

"Judging by when you first dosed?" She checked her watch. "Half a day or less."

"Perfect," I said. "Hopefully this will give me just enough time to get things fixed at the bank." And then, as an afterthought, I said, "Just the same, if I take a second dose..."

"You can try it," Holli said. "But it doesn't seem to have any affect on Rommel."

"Do you...have any newer mixtures that work better?"

Holli shook her head. "The last rat I tested exploded."

_"I'm sure it'll be fine,"_ Cupcake said as she massaged my shoulders.

Holli frowned. "What's _she_ doing here?"

"Well," I said. "She's my new boss, and she was nice enough to fly me over here."

"He also loves me," she purred.

"I..._like_ her," I said. "Love's kind of strong for someone I just barely know..."

Holli just shrugged. "Sleep with whoever you want. Just be good to my daughter, okay?"

"Of course," I said.

And then, noticing how bad that sounded, I quickly added, "No one said I'm going to sleep with Cupcake."

"But h wouldn't mind if he did," Cupcake said.

I winced. "Let's talk about this later."

Holli showed me into the lab, handing me a couple bottles of her chemicals.

"I probably wouldn't use these except as a last resort," she said.

Cupcake swiped something, stuffing it into her cleavage, but I turned a blind eye to it. If she wanted to turn into Frankentweetie, that was her decision. It would only make it that less likely for me to sleep with her.

Next, we headed straight to the rip in space/time.

Although it was uncomfortable to have Cupcake and the mouse around, I was thankful for them when they helped me open the portal.

Once through the hole, we waded through the piles of musty junk in Dane's bedroom, frowning at the unmade bed, the sloppily stuffed dresser drawers, the posters hung in haphazard fashion.

"What a dump!" Cupcake complained.

"Finally!" I said. "Someone who gets it!"

"I don't get it," Sneezer said.

I rolled my eyes. "You wouldn't."

The moment I stepped out into the hallway, an unmuscular body with tattooed arms shoved me into the wall, pressing a knife to my throat.

My bottles of chemical fell to the floor, but fortunately they were plastic, and they fell on carpet, so nothing was lost.

"What have you done with my girlfriend!" he yelled.

I suppose I could have fought back, but then again, I wasn't really that interested in interfering in their relationship.

"She's alive and well," I said. "She just likes being in cartoon world better than she likes being here."

Greg punched me in the face.

"Look," I pleaded. "She clearly has no interest in me, so we don't need to fight over this. In fact, I can _take_ you to cartoon land, if it'll make you feel any better."

"So you killed her, now you're threatening me?"

"No..."

He punched me again.

"Don't you touch my boyfriend!" Cupcake screamed, and then I saw nothing but a cloud of black and tan feathers.

A second later, the young man was flat on his back with his knife buried in the carpet an inch from his throat.

"Jesus," he whispered as he stared up at the demonic creature standing on his chest. "I'm never smoking that shit again!"

I got away from the guy as quickly as I could.

Greg had left his laptop open. Not wanting to interrupt his fat people pornography browsing, I opened a new tab, getting directions to the nearest branch of my bank by a web search and one of the address from one of the unpaid bills scattered on the coffee table.

I used a golf pencil to write the directions down on an envelope of an insurance cancellation notice, and we were out the door.

The clocks in the house said 4:40 PM.

Well, _the one on the computer_ said 4:40. The DVD said two PM, and the oven said twelve o' clock.

Although I never understood bankers' hours, I respected them. We'd have to hurry.

"Um, Cupcake?" I asked.

"Yes, my king?"

"Would you have any objection to flying me over to twelfth street?"

"None whatsoever," she said, spreading her wings in her usual indecent manner. "You just wanted to see me in my underwear, didn't you?""

"Um," I stammered. "It's more like icing on the cake."

I mostly said this to encourage her to fly me to the bank. Mostly.

"Icing! I _like_ it!"

It turns out Cupcake has a photographic memory. But I guess that comes with the territory. Classic animated storks don't use Mapquest.

We got stared at, but she carried me and Sneezer over the roofs of tobacco stores and used car lots and those damn tax offices with the guys in Statue of Liberty costumes out front, then we were at the Las Vegas Bank of the West.

I told my companions to stay outside, and try not to get into trouble. I suspected this would be on Facebook later, regardless, but I wanted to minimize the damage.

This bank location didn't flaunt its wealth like the Ewes/US Bank office, which is good because it would only make everyone more resentful about things such as the minimum balance maintenance fee. It _was_ tidy and professional looking, though.

The teller windows and check writing stand had granite facades, they had a large company sign, and a flat panel monitor that gave financial tips and weather forecasts.

I took a seat along the wall facing the only clerk able to handle fraud disputes (as opposed to the tellers, which happened to be abundant), waiting patiently as she showed a skinny geezer with missing teeth how to read his online bank statement and view his stocks.

I worried that they'd continue to ignore me and close the bank, but I had faith in the system. I had learned from experience that no one can occupy a bank chair for more than a minute without being asked if they needed help. That was good _and_ bad.

While I waited, I flickered doodle a few times. People muttered and pointed at me a few times, but I pretended to read a copy of Forbes.

Truthfully, I doubt anyone does not read that kind of magazine under some kind of false pretense. The interviews with smug moguls and excessively elitist ads will lull even the hardiest into semi-consciousness.

The clerk reminded me of my high school math teacher. Conservatively dressed, dark skinned, hornrimmed spectacles, sour expression on her face, hair in a tight bun. She was everything I looked for in a banker. I prefer honesty to plastic smiles.

"Can I help you?" she said when she was finished showing the guy how to use the Internet.

I hurried to her glass topped desk, whipped out my ID, and told her my story.

Okay, _not my whole story_, but the easy to digest version.

While I was doing this, I changed into a doodle a few more times, but kept serious, thinking serious thoughts until I changed back. I acted as if nothing were wrong. Better check your prescriptions again, Mrs. Jennings, I implied nonverbally.

As I was signing the dispute forms, my hand became useless due to becoming Parasaurolophus and staying that way, but I got sad and depressed enough about it that my hand flickered real and I was able to turn the papers in.

The woman stared at me, but I refused to act uncomfortable or nervous. I was determined to repair this blight on my account.

"Has that check gone through yet?" I asked. "The one for the rent?"

Mrs. Jennings frowned at the screen. "I'm sorry, Mr. Deebes. That check already shows as declined."

I sighed. "I guess I'll just have to write another check."

"This is going to sound silly," she said. "But I could almost swear that you look like a dinosaur."

I shrugged. "You know, one kid I met said I was old because I remembered when Reagan was president. Maybe I _am_ one."

"No, I mean, like a real dinosaur."

She nodded her head toward the tellers. "You see them pointing?"

I played dumb, glancing over at them. "_They're pointing?_"

And then, after pretending to think about it for a moment, "You're sure they're pointing at me?"

Mrs. Jennings rubbed her eyes and frowned. "I think the coffee's wearing off."

The woman looked disturbed, but processed the forms anyway, typing something on the computer.

So concerned was she that, after telling me I had a provisional credit on my account, she showed me my online statement to make sure she'd done it right.

After assuring her that she did, I got up, and immediately found my animated jaw dropping to the tile floor.

A shapely young woman with perfect coffee brown skin, short cropped dark hair, dressed in clothing suspiciously similar to my royal bird friend came clopping into the room on her high heeled boots.

I gawked at her plump but visually pleasing facial features, the wide flat nose, forming sort of an odd beak shape, the dark glittering brown eyes...

The chains were real. I heard them jangling around her breasts. The polo appeared to be actually made of the rough Peruvian cotton weave you'd expect one to be made of, likewise the skirt. The gloves and boots seemed to be leather.

It was hot. When I put my jaw back, I found my heart beating out of my chest, and I was making a weird saurian bellow.

She clopped over to me, giving me a coy smile. "Is there a problem?"

The voice. It was unmistakable.

"Cupcake?"

"_Dolly Madison_, actually," she said in a seductive purr.

I chortled. "And all this time, I thought your name had something to do with breast size."

`Dolly' only twisted her lip. "Is it done?"

I nodded. "Did you..._drink something?_"

She slid her hands down her hips. "Sneezer said you had a thing for noids."

And then I heard a chirping sound.

`Dolly' reached into her purse, taking out a phone.

"Hold on. I just got a Tweet."

Then she giggled, typing something.

Was this an informant, or just some weenie complaining about some celebrity with a tiny brain shooting their mouth off? I didn't ask, out of politeness, but in Cool World, what you don't know can and will hurt you.

She put away her phone. "Carlos is waiting for you in the parking lot."

"Carlos?" I said.

"_Carlos Queso_. You know, _your friend._"

I stared at her for a moment, then said, "That's okay. I don't really want to know."

I found out anyway.

The moment I turned human and pushed open the glass door, I found myself staring at a little Mexican guy that bore a striking resemblance to one of those `Homies' toys you see in certain vending machines, specifically the `Mousey' one.

The hombre was skinny, with a backwards cap and rodent-like features, but still a man. I would have stared for a moment and passed by without a second thought, had he not been wearing Sneezer's costume, the jacket, slacks and all.

"How'd it go?" he said in Sneezer's voice.

I glanced at him, then at `Dolly.'

"You both drank that stuff, didn't you."

Sneezer just shrugged.

"Whatever. Let's go have lunch."

I would have said, "Let's go back to my apartment," but that implied something I wasn't ready for, even with a suddenly humanized Cupcake.

I would have preferred to go out, but I couldn't afford it, even with provisional credit.

As we stood in the parking lot, the full weight of Cupcake's action struck me.

"We're, uh, in for a _long_ walk."

Out in the parking lot, the attractive young woman grunted and wiggled for a few moments, apparently trying to pull the bird stripper routine as a human.

Failing to shred her clothing like the Incredible Hulk, she pulled off her chains, tried it again, and when she failed a second time, she pulled off her top.

"Cupcake. Dolly. You probably shouldn't be doing that in public. There are _laws_ here..."

"It won't matter once we're in the air," she said as she pulled off her skirt. "Plus, I like seeing you squirm."

I had nothing to say to that last comment. She _did_ look very..._nice_.

_"All right,"_ I said. _"Let's hope this works."_

As luck would have it, wings actually did pop out of her back. As I stared at her silky blue underwear, cartoon bat wings spread out from behind her.

"You know," I said. "I'm not sure this is going to be safe. Maybe you should fly low."

"Definitely," she said. "On the way in, I tripped on a rock and fell on my knee. I'd rather not experience any more pain today."

She stuffed her clothes into her purse, which, though real looking must have had Hammerspace in the bottom, then grabbed me, flapping her wings.

In attempts to keep her afloat, I taught her _Three Months To Kill_ by Hueylin Duvall, _School Day_ by Chuck Berry, and some other mindless songs.

As I directed her to my apartment, her wings fluctuated between leathery horror movie wings, cartoon wings, and no wings, wherein we remained suspended only by the theme song to _The Great Space Coaster_. I was rather pleased to defy the laws of physics in the real world for once, instead of having it defy me.

We crash landed on the roof of a McDonald's two blocks from my house. It would have been convenient had I not been broke, and hanging out with a half naked chick.

Fortunately for us, the building was as rigid and wooden as their French fries, so we didn't cause any property damage.

Once Cupcake was decently clad, well, _the equivalent_, we climbed the cigarette smoker's ladder, hurrying across a busy intersection and down a sidewalk lacking curb to the complex.

I had the keys, but it turned out I didn't need them.

Someone had bashed in my door.

The handle and the locking mechanism had been knocked in so much that it couldn't loc, or even click into the hole to make the door stay closed. Instead, it stayed closed due to the splintery piece hanging askew from the caved in door handle piece.

All you had to do was push it in to access the room, and pull the damaged portion snug in the frame to close it again. Not secure at all.

It got worse.

When I walked into my apartment, I found it clean.

Too clean.

My TV was gone.

My computer.

My Amazon Kindle.

My games and game systems.

My radio.

No bills.

No paperwork of any kind.

No bank statements or checks anywhere.

No trash.

Paradoxically, I found the dishes spotless, stacked in my cabinets, my bed made.

It was like I had been robbed by Mary Poppins.

When I thought about reporting this, I slowly began to comprehend the evil of this scheme.

No one was ever going to believe that my things were stolen.

And then I see an oversized greeting card envelope, tied with a shiny red bow.

Seething at the audacity of this bipolar vandal, I ripped the envelope open, scowling at what I found inside.

"Thank you for your business!" the card said on the outside, beneath a pretentious looking image of a wooden bird.

The interior was blank, save for one brief message, written a neat cursive script:

We're even.

-M.T.

I ripped the card in half, crumpling the pieces in my fists.

"That bitch!" Cupcake cried.

I couldn't help but smirk a little at her appearing to sympathize with my plight. This definitely was a doodle who `got it.'

"Did you say we could have lunch?" Sneezer asked.

The first incident at the hotel happened before I had a chance to go shopping. I treated my guests to peanut butter sandwiches.

We ate in silence around my little table, staring at each other. I and Sneezer sat in office chairs some company discarded. Cupcake sat on the bed, facing me, with her legs under the table. In case you're wondering, from time to time, I _have_ rolled over in my sleep and knocked dishes to the floor.

"I have no checkbook," I said. "Which means I can't write anything to pay the rent."

"Still," Cupcake said. "_You disputed the charges_. When was your rent due anyway?"

That reminded me to charge the phone.

Unfortunately, Mary Thievings had taken my charger too, along with my calendar _and_ my alarm clocks, and my microwave was an older model that didn't tell time. Even the stove didn't have one.

I glanced at my phone, its battery now down to one bar. "I got a week," I said.

She smiled. "So you can still make this work!"

That made me feel a little better. "I guess you're right. I think I could even maybe drive to work to get _that_ straightened out."

_"That's the spirit!"_

I took another bite of my sandwich. "I'm sorry about this. I'd take you somewhere nicer if I wasn't so broke."

"It's okay. I understand. _You were robbed._"

She ate a piece of her own sandwich, pausing for a moment to fight the dry peanut butter down her throat. "I...noticed you've been...treating me differently."

"I...I dunno," I stammered. "I mean, you're _real_ right now..."

"I mean, _before that._"

"Well," I said. "I kinda did feel sorry for you...And you _do_ seem to have _matured_ since we last..._met._"

That wasn't quite the word I wanted to use to describe my visit to bird land, but it was the first one that came to mind.

"You work at a _bank_," I said. "A _real_ bank. You obviously know something about the real world and finances or you wouldn't be where you are. And then you _help me out._..You don't do that diaper thing anymore, do you?"

"No," she said. "_Did you want me to?_"

"Uh, no," I said.

"I thought a lot about that when I was in the Shadow Realm. After that first year alone, I asked myself, `Do I want to please my king, or do I want to spend a life alone, pooping on myself?' I answered, `Although pooping is indeed pleasurable, it does not compare to winning the heart of someone I truly care about.' And so I stopped. Anything to please my king."

"He likes bird poop on his windows," Sneezer said.

I thought about disagreeing, but instead I said, "That's right. It's better there than in my bed."

Which probably implied more than I wanted anyway.

Taking a deep breath, I said, 'You were crazy before, like all the other doodles, but now you're..._professional_, for lack of a better word. You get me. I like it."

"Drew," she said, turning into a demon bird. "You flatter me!"

"Uh, as long as you don't let it get to your head, _queen._"

Cupcake giggled. "We'll have to work on putting the `my' or at least an `oh' in there."

She became human once more.

Once that meager repast was finished, I sat down on the end of my bed, staring at the tidy floor.

The leasing office was already closed, so I couldn't do much about the unwanted packages.

I dialed work, but after ringing a few times, the phone died, the screen going black. I tossed it on the floor.

"You can drive to work tomorrow," she said, pushing me onto my bed. "Let's have some fun."

Sneezer pulled up a chair to watch.

I admit I had _thought_ about it, but I was trying to get myself out of this whole mess, not dig myself in deeper.

"I, uh, I'm not sure I want to have _that_ kind of fun yet."

"Why not?" she said, wrapping her legs around my waist. "You _like_ me, you _like_ how I look, maybe _really really like_ how I look..."

"Cupcake," I protested as she unshackled her top. "Regardless of what I feel about you, I went through a lot of trouble to cure myself. I don't want to mess that up."

"Drew, is being a doodle really all that bad?"

I swallowed. "Somewhat, yes."

"_Somewhat,"_ she said, turning into the demon. "That _implies_ that there's some things about being a doodle that you actually like."

"Well, yeah," I admitted.

Just when I thought I found her logical mind refreshing.

She pulled off her top.

I'm ashamed to admit it, but the first thought that came to my mind was, "If I sleep with you, will I grow wings?"

I shook my head, forcing myself to be serious, and not stare at her breasts.

"Wait," I said. "C'mon. I don't want to be like this forever!" And then I turned into a dinosaur and bellowed for emphasis.

I figure if I had stayed a doodle, she may not have had as much fun with me, but, of course, I didn't stay that way for that long. I guessed the side effects would happen a few hours later, or something.

She turned human, rubbing her crotch against me. "How about now?"

"I'm sorry," I said. "It's like an STD. Just because I don't see it doesn't mean I can't get infected."

Cupcake frowned, then pulled a shiny silver package out of her bra.

"Would this help?"

I stared at her in shock. "Not you too!"

"Don't worry, my king," she said, tearing the package open. "Unlike your French Tickler, this one doesn't actually talk."

I paled. "How did you know about that?"

She gave me a wink. "I _am_ the bird queen."

She undid her skirt, then worked on undoing my shirt buttons. "Don't worry, Drew. Tomorrow we can check with your job, and get you those checks you need."

That's when Carlos Queso sticks a little rectangle of paper printed with my routing and account number in front of my face. "Is _this_ a check?"

I frowned as I examined it.

It was blank.

Well, not blank, _signed and blank_.

I sat up, accidentally bumping my face into Cupcake's bra.

Ignoring her giggles, I snatched the check out of Sneezer's hands. "Where did you get this!"

"I grabbed it on the way in," he said with a shrug. "Someone stapled a whole bunch of them to a telephone pole."


	65. Chapter 65: Wishes

Jessica

* * *

We had to figure out the score to _When You Wish Upon A Star, backwards_.

Worse, Hanna Montana was about to wake up, which potentially could mean the accidental death of us all.

My phone was running a little low on juice, so I really didn't want to use _that_, either. I mean, seriously, what would _you_ read?

Okay, so maybe I could possibly type something up from memory, but...

As I was wondering about this, Misty took out a Dick Tracy watch, clicking the buttons.

"Agent Dark Monkey! What is your status?"

The sounds of a gibbering chimp answered her.

"Ah, so you've found the address. Good work!"

Chimpanzee sounds.

"...I really don't care. Get in there any way you can. Insectia _should_ be able to come up with something, but if she runs out of ideas, there's nothing wrong with a little brute force."

I heard a loud cracking sound.

"I sent Insectia to accompany you for a _reason_, Dark Monkey!" Misty scolded.

The monkey answered her with an `I'm sorry' sound.

Kurt cleared his throat impatiently. Misty frowned.

"Listen," she asked the monkey. "Do you know the notes to _When You Wish Upon A Star_?"

Hoo hoo hoo hee hee hee.

"That's really okay. We wouldn't want to derail the mission."

Looking at the man with embarrassment, she said, "I'm sorry. I don't know that one."

She shut the device off, giving him a smile. "Unfortunately, neither does my monkey."

Looking frustrated, Kurt removed Miley's gag, asking her about the song.

Instead of screaming about the kidnapping, she said, "Wow! Kurt Russell! I've seen _all_ your movies."

The man rolled his eyes. "Thanks. Look, we're in a tight situation, so if you want to get out of here alive, I need you to tell me if you know the complete score to _When You Wish Upon A Star."_

She shook her head. "No, no. I sing from a teleprompter."

But then she frowned. "Did you say _When You Wish Upon A Star?"_

Kurt crossed his arms and nodded.

"I'm not sure, but I kinda think I know that one backwards and forwards."

"I know it too," Chad whispered to me. "Well, _parts of it..._"

"_Everyone_ knows parts of it," I snapped. "Be quiet!"

Kurt pointed to a music note on a little brass plaque in the corner. "Obviously we're at the end of the song. What goes before this note?"

Miley hummed a note, then pointed to one of the doors bearing the preceding letter.

In the movie, The Cube was solved by an idiot savant, too.

We stepped into the next cube, unharmed by...whatever deadly trap that could have been there.

As we clomped across the floor, I heard a chirping sound.

I checked my phone, but when I saw nothing on it, I noticed Misty holding her watch to her ear again, listening to the squealing chimp.

"Yes, yes," she said. "Get rid of all those things. We need to teach him how crippling the loss of that factory was to my personal finances. _Especially those birds._ Did you remember the card?"

The monkey grunted yes.

"Good, good. Now I want you to make a big mess of his place, too."

She frowned as she listened again. "What do you mean, it's already a mess?"

I tapped her on the shoulder. "He's a _man_, Misty. You might upset him more by _cleaning up_, and moving everything around where he can't find it."

"But he turns into a _girl rat!_"

I laughed and shook my head. "Trust me on this one. He'll be _pissed._"

"What about the clocks? Should I take those, too?"

"Uh..." After thinking about it a moment, I said, "I guess you could, and the cell phone charger and his calendars, but _that would just be mean._"

Kurt said the place was chock full of deadly traps, but we didn't have to worry about them. Miley could just take one of our pencils, draw a measure with notes in it, then point us to the appropriate room.

That may sound amazing, but I don't think she's really as talented as all that. I'm pretty sure it has more to do with the fact that, for her, regurgitation is a survival skill.

In an hour, we were staring out into another white hallway.

"One thing that bugs me about this," I said as I followed Kurt through a gate, into another underground concrete tunnel lined with Mickey heads. "If we were in the entrance when we started, and the rooms are always moving around, couldn't we have just sat in that same room and waited for it to roll us down here?"

"I tried that," Kurt replied. "But I ended up in a room full of gay guys in baby costumes. They tried to put me in a big crib."

He visibly shuddered.

As we neared the end of the tunnel, Misty stopped, talking on her Dick Tracy watch again.

"Agent Dark Monkey! Status report!"

The monkey jabbered incoherently.

"..._I see._ Very good."

Misty stared at me. "What are those little pieces of paper with the numbers running along the bottom?"

I frowned. "Receipts?"

"They are rectangular, and have different designs on them."

"Like baseball or Pokemon cards?"

"No, those are _cards_."

She showed me an image.

"Oh. _Those_. Those are _checks_."

I had to explain how they worked.

Misty told the monkey to do something with them, and we continued our march.

The tunnel took us to a cave-like dimly lit gray room piled full of boat parts and little broken animatronic dolls.

Judging by the ladder and the tools, it seemed to be some sort of maintenance area, and the endlessly repeating inane music I kept hearing told me I was in the Small World ride.

The moment I stepped in there, I told Chad to bounce the baby, maybe check if little Isosceles had been changed.

But then I noticed the crying had an unusual amplitude.

I dismissed this at first, thinking that if I were a baby being made to ride on that stupid boat, I'd cry too.

That was before I looked down.

I was looking at a dozen, maybe more, children that had...strangely doodle-like characteristics.

_Kind of like..._Isosceles.

The crying abruptly stopped as they all turned to face me.

_"My babies!"_ I squealed.

Chad fainted.


	66. Chapter 66: Ghermanntown

"_All right..._" Kurt said as he watched me pick up and cuddle my babies. "I _was_ going to help you out to the parking lot, but it looks like you've got your work cut out for you here...not that I could complain about taking an army of weird deformed baby monsters home..."

He grabbed our captive's arm.

"C'mon, Miley. I know a place where we can get free drinks."

I was about to ask him to show me so I could get some too, but Misty already had her icer out.

"Tsk, tsk. The party's just started."

Kurt spun around to attack, but it was too late. Both he and the pop tart collapsed unconscious on the floor.

I put my hands on my hips, glancing at her. "I assume you have a plan."

"`Natch." She opened her `buggage', taking out a device that looked like a giant Tricorder. "Spike, please."

Oh. I forgot to mention something. Since I had the spike stuck in my bikini this whole time, I never once changed back into a human. Awesome!

Anways, that's why I was able to carry the thing so far without an embarrassing `wardrobe malfunction.'

I turned back into a noid the moment I handed it over. "That thing doesn't give you cancer, does it?"

Misty only shrugged. "You know, I'm not really sure."

The Tricorder thing was designed to interface with the spike in a way that was kind of Freudian,but I guess really there are few cartoons that aren't in some way Freudian. Thong wearing guys with swords cutting bloodless holes in dragons, for example.

She pushed a button on this device, and all of a sudden it's like there's a hurricane blowing through, and I see a beam shooting out, creating a big ripping hole in reality, through which I could see Master Blaster's throne room.

I have never been so glad to see an animated world.

"Hey," I said. "Why couldn't we have done this back there? Instead of going through The Cube?"

"The Cube was _moving_," Misty said.

That _almost_ made sense.

"Okay," I said. "So what about before The Cube? Why couldn't we have done this at Mickey's place, or in the Cryptkeeper's Crypt?"

Misty just sighed.

My jaw dropped. _"You knew?"_

"It was _on the computer,_" she said. "I didn't want to tell you up front or we'd never complete the mission."

In response, I shouted, "Okay, Miss Let's Put The Mission Aside To Get Revenge on Drew Deebes!"

Instead of apologizing, she said, "I didn't actually know we were going through this area of the park. I thought we were going to need to make an extra trip just to find all your little darlings."

She cleared her throat. "Believe it or not, I actually _did_ intend on doing just that, but not before we got everything else done."

And then she said the closest thing I would get to an apology. "I didn't know if we were going to live. If I knew we would be standing here with the Spike..."

She pushed some buttons on the device. "At any rate, let's get those prisoners, and your babies, back into Cool World where they belong."

The adults were a little heavy, but between me, Chad and Sleez, we schlepped them both in, _and_ the babies.

_As much as we loved the place_, were were all too happy to leave, ourselves.

Spikes are powerful, so we got through the portal without a problem, at which point we stood before Master Blaster's floating throne with our unconscious trophies.

The first thing out of the guy's mouth was, "Not her again!" He was shaking a fat finger at Miley.

Trying not to look nervous, I smiled and said, "Whatever do you mean?"

But Misty said, "Here's the circus performer you requested."

Master Blaster knitted his brows together. "Circus performer! She couldn't perform her way out of a cardboard box! The only performance she knows how to do is on her back!"

"She is the Amazing Tool Licker," I said.

"Precisely," he replied. "Did I say `on her back'? I meant `on her knees!'"

"Have you seen her lick a skill saw?" I said.

This made him stop and rub his chin.

And then he looked down. "Is that Kurt Russell?"

I shrugged. "_It might be._"

Master Blaster clapped his hands eagerly. "Oh excellent! Excellent! You know, that man's a little escape artist. I had _so_ much trouble keeping him imprisoned last time. Wonderful, wonderful!"

He summoned Fat Cat to bind the two captives, then grimaced when he noticed the crowd of little flesh creatures.

"And what are _those_ things?"

"_Those_," I said. "Those are not _things_. They are my _babies._"

He stared at them for a few moments, floating around in his chair.

"I think I should like to have _one_ of these. But only one. Would you allow me this honor?"

I stared at him like he were crazy.

But then, after thinking about it a moment, I decided I had too many, and Master Blaster would make a good adopted father, having three babysitters on staff and everything, so I let him have his pick.

He picked a cat girl.

Judging by his choice in servants, I suppose that's not really a surprise. He probably subscribes to _Cat Fancy_.

Come to think of it, you couldn't have made a better match.

I glanced at my baby in the harness, then frowned at Chad.

"I don't think our little Isosceles should go through any more traumatic experiences like that. You think you'd be okay with staying here and just babysitting him for awhile?"

"Passion flower," he stammered. "I...I would prefer to travel with you, and see new things..."

"_Chad,_" Misty said. "Wouldn't you much rather stay home and play with your dolls?"

"I..." He frowned. "But..."

"Don't you _like_ the idea of being a home maker?"

He nodded with enthusiasm.

"Well then."

I cleared my throat. "I really do need you to take these babies back to Misty's home for me. Can you do that?"

"What about you?" he said. "Won't you be in danger?"

"I'll manage," I said. "I've got Misty and Sleez with me. Just put on your leotards and show the babies your doll collection, or something."

"Is this a real winery?" Chad asked.

I shrugged. "I believe so. Why?"

"Lovely snap dragon, I have never been to a real winery before, or tasted real wine. May I please go?"

"But who will take care of the babies?"

Misty whispered something to her butler.

"Mmyes," Sleez replied.

"Sleezington will take care of it, won't you, Sleez?"

"Gladly, O Sexy Mistress of Darkness."

She rolled her eyes. "Sleez, what did I tell you about pet talk?"

"You _enjoy it_," he answered.

She blushed, waving for him to get to work. "If you please, Sleezington."

"Mmmyes. _This will be lovely practice._"

He quickly started loading the babies into large jukebox bubbles.

He tried to take the one Chad was carrying around, but when he got near, I waved him away.

"That's okay. We're good."

"Now," Master Blaster said. "The next Spike is located in a place called Ghermanntown..."

He pointed to another mirror.

"Ghermanntown?" I said. "And why does _that_ sound familiar?"

Misty stared at the screen. "Do you know something about Ghermanntown Cellars Winery?"

I smirked. "I've _had_ a few bottles..."

We walked to the mirror he'd pointed to.

On the other side, I could see a dimly lit basement containing silver beer kegs, chairs, and a wine rack. Boxes contained wine, dish detergent, and toilet paper. They also had a pool table with a tarp over it.

We climbed through the glass into..._Viktor's Bierhausen._

That's what all the menus said when we went upstairs.

The place looked like an IHOP with a bar...and German things on the walls.

The owner's family crest, a German flag, maps and photos of locations like the Rhineland and Berlin, Dutch windmills, and Normandy as an actual beach.

If Viktor's always did such light business, the place should be renamed the _Poorhausen_. I saw only one couple eating there.

The air was thick with bread and burnt bratwurst, cookies and..._tacos_. I guess they were trying to branch out.

A gnarled old man, who indeed appeared to be German, caught us as we were coming through the hallway.

He rubbed his eyes, turned around, and darted back into the kitchen.

We hurried outside.

Ghermanntown was a little north of Saint Louis, and you ordinarily reached it by means of bridges, since it was almost an island.

I'd visited the place once on Oktoberfest. Cute. Very cute, but hilly.

The hills compared to that of San Francisco. You'd have to be crazy to go skateboarding on some of those hills.

It wasn't nearly as exciting as it had been during October.

So maybe I've visited the place a few times. It's on the way to an independent design firm in Kansas City...before other firms pushed them out of business.

I saw a boy skateboarding down to a gas station on the bottom of the hill.

If he lived there, I kinda felt sorry for him. His big career choices would be either working at the winery, working at said gas station, or some touristy place like Viktors.

The town is small, and there aren't many other types of businesses. The people I met in the gas stations said they wanted to move out so they could find better work.

If you want internet in that town, you have the choice of either dial-up, or dial-up, but they have four kinds of car companies to buy from.

Misty glanced at a cemetery at the top of one of the steep hills, then stared at her screen.

"We need to be at Ghermanntown Cellars, which is..."

Rolling my eyes, I just pointed to the top of the opposite hill, to the tiny gray building surrounded by all the trellises with the green vines.

"Would it be _there_, perhaps?"

Basically, Ghermanntown is a big suburb. There's a lot of nice looking cosy little split level houses, occupied by old people and maybe a couple yuppies having a midlife crisis (I believe this is the case with the newer bead and breakfast).

The more run down buildings lay at the bottom of all the hills, but it's not exactly a ghetto. If you want a ghetto, you'd have go go across some railroad tracks.

Which reminds me, I never see black people hanging around there...well, _anywhere_, except maybe once or twice on a winery tour.

Not sure what that means, I'm just sayin'. Kinda suspicious.

We climbed a steep hill, winding our way up roads framed by bushy trees and little houses.

When I barged ahead, Misty asked me if I knew where I was going.

I told her the winery stands on the highest point in the town, so you only have to keep going up to find the place.

Sure enough, we soon reached a large vineyard, and a park with picnic tables.

And there was the winery, a long brick structure with large windows in front, and none in the back that I could see.

Yuppie tourists stood and chatted on the lawn, more or less about us when we passed by, because there wasn't that much to talk about out in the sticks.

They must have gotten some phones from out of town, because they were Snapchatting me and posting stuff on Facebook, I believe.

Well, if this cel phone dead zone actually allowed it...

Tired of being gawked at, we hurried through the front door.

The place was _old_. It looked pretty much the way it looked the last time I came there. Even the giant wooden cask that faced us when we came in.

The floors were polished wood, but they probably had been there since the town was founded.

It wouldn't surprise me, for, during my last winery tour, they told me that, during the Prohibition, they had grown _mushrooms_ in the place.

As my mind turned over this little detail, I decided they _must_ have a secret Speakeasy room somewhere.

More rich people were standing around in this gift shop.

I thought the entrance to the winery was this way, but I only saw some conveniently located restrooms.

Yes, I should have been more familiar with the layout, but it _had_ been awhile since I visited.

I returned to the giant cask, and that's when I noticed the empty desk podium with a sign saying something about the next winery tour being at four P.M.

It didn't say whether they were at lunch or _doing_ a tour, but the only thing keeping me from taking my own was a rope and a grumpy looking yuppie in a suit.

Misty made short work of him with her icer.

Following Misty's computer, we ran through an alley made of stacked wooden casks, hurrying down a staircase, into the winery proper.

We passed through a miniature museum, displaying the racks they once used to harvest mushrooms in, and other antiquated winery equipment, then pushed past a brunette woman in a suit as she was explaining how they had big shin silver mixing drums instead of guys stomping grapes barefoot outside.

You know, I never figured that one out. If you discover foot fungus in your wine, is it free?

Not important.

We kept going, rushing down a roped off area with an employees only sign.

"Sir!" the tour guide shouted. "Sir!"

But we were already running between a pair of shiny air tight vats, and down a brick corridor.

That's when I saw the weird World War II photographs, and a swastika flag.

"Um...Misty?" I stammered as I gawked at a photograph of German kids having fun at Der Fuhrer's potato sack race "This place looks a little suspicious. Ate you sure this is where the Spike is suppose to be?"

She glanced at her computer. "This is the place!"

A few seconds later, I see a group of Brown Shirts coming down the hall.

They were not what I expected.

On one side, i see an old man in an S.S. uniform..._with a walker_. On the other, I see a fatter man, also in Nazi costume, with a power chair.

A third looked _almost_ like a worthy opponent, but he had no teeth, and carried a portable oxygen concentrator, with plastic tubing in his nostrils.

Before I could laugh and push them over, I see a glowing figure stepping out from behind them.

A short figure with a toupee and a toothbrush mustache.

"Ah good," he said with a thick Bavarian accent. "You have brought me the other Spike of Power! Deutscheland shall at last be restored to its former glory!"

The aged Brown Shirts commenced a chorus of "Sieg heil".

...Then broke into a coughing fit.


	67. Chapter 67: Havok Staff

Drew

* * *

I hurried out of my apartment, checking the telephone poles.

Cupcake almost came outside in her underwear but I told her not to.

Sure enough, entire checkbooks and deposit slips had been stapled all over them, complete with forged signature.

Worse, many had already been removed, leaving tell-tale stubs of ripped paper, some identity thief already on their way to buying who knows what, _with my money_.

The bank, of course, was closed for the day. You could still _call_ to change the bank account number to protect against fraud, but that required a _phone_.

I mentioned this problem to Cupcake. "I wish I could borrow one from somebody..."

"How about I go inside and knock on people's doors?" Sneezer asked.

He still looked human.

I stared at him for a moment, then said, "Would you?"

He nodded, darting through the entrance.

The queen bird leaned against the glass window next to the front door. Her reflection looked strangely lizard-like, but she was already black, with horns, so I wasn't really that surprised.

What did surprise me was how she suddenly reached down into her underwear, pulling out a sort of gold trident with rounded points, affixing it to a jeweled bird ornament she had tucked in her top, then pulled a long staff out of her throat like a sword swallower, screwing it into the bird.

"And what will you be doing with _that_?" I asked.

A little black girl in overalls, with cornrowed hair braided in little beads drew pictures with chalk on a nearby section of sidewalk. Cupcake pointed the staff at her.

She mumbled something, and the child was enveloped by bright glowing light.

A second later, the girl was gone, a little red cartoon bird with braided hair hopping and chirping in her place.

The bird examined its wings, chirped merrily, and flew to the rooftop.

I stared at the queen in horror. "Cupcake! How could you! _That was a little girl_!"

Cupcake shrugged. "Drew. I didn't hurt her. I just made her into a bird."

The red bird flew down, alighting on my shoulder.

It chirped and nuzzled against me, seemingly without a care in the world.

"See?" she said. "She looks happy, don't you think?"

I furrowed my brow in dismay. "I..._I guess._"

"From what I've seen of this area," Cupcake said. "This is a place for the financially struggling. If you could choose between a life of poverty and being a cartoon bird, which would you pick?"

I sighed. "Yeah, but what about her family?"

"I'm sure we'll get to that eventually..." She pressed me against the door frame. "Where were we..." And then she kissed me passionately.

"Did someone need to borrow a phone?"

I looked up and saw a big fat woman in a polka dotted dress. The orange cat was sidling out around her swollen calves.

Her name was Bertha Featherstone. I knew this only because we got our mail mixed up once, and it was on the envelope I gave back.

She was a nice enough neighbor. We never really talked that much, but we weren't enemies or anything.

"Yes," I blurted. "I'm sorry for the inconvenience, but someone's trying to do bank account fraud with my checking account."

The woman shook her head, making tsk sounds. "It seems like everyone's having problems these days. Why, only last month someone hacked into mine..." She frowned, staring down the sidewalk.

"Sissy!" she called. "Sissy! Where did you go!" She frowned at me. "Have you seen my daughter? Little thing with braided hair and overalls?"

"Uh, no," I stammered.

What was I going to say, yes, we turned her into a bird?

"I'm here, mama," chirped the red bird.

"Sissy!" Bertha cried, apparently not seeing my little animated companion. "Where are you!"

"I'm here, mama!" the little bird cried.

"Sissy!"

"Mama!"

The scene would have played on like a _Twilight Zone_ episode, except at that moment, Cupcake grew impatient, blasting her with the staff.

And then there were _two_ birds, a little red bird and a big fat cartoon chicken in a polka dot dress. The two hugged each other and chirped happily.

"How's that for family?" Cupcake said.

I was too shocked to reply.

She smiled. "Gotta love a happy ending."

I frowned. "I'm not sure that's what this is."

Ignoring this comment, Cupcake twirled her staff, planting it on the ground.

"You know, this also doubles a sex toy."

She clicked a button on the side of the trident, and it began vibrating.

I cringed.

"A shame we had to get interrupted," she said. "I was hoping to surprise you. It could have made our lovemaking _interesting._"

"_Tragic_," I muttered facetiously.

The cartoon chicken handed me her phone like everything was still normal.

"Um, thank you, Bertha," I said.

I called the bank, and did manage to change the account number. It would have to do until the following day.

"There!" Cupcake said with an air of triumph. "Everything's finally getting back to its proper order. What do you think? Are we happy now? Ready to...go back to our _love nest_?"

Feeling unsettled, I said, "Not quite."

Sighing heavily, she placed a hand on my shoulder and said, "_Drew._ We'll take care of your bank account _tomorrow_."

"That's _not_ what I'm worried about," I said. "Can you please change these people back to normal?"

"They're better off this way," she said.

"No," I said. "They're not."

She glared at me. "Drew. I'm your boss, your queen and your lover. Don't piss me off."

"What," I said. "Or you'll go away?"

"_C'mon, Drew,_" she said, pressing me against the door frame again. "_I see how you look at me..._"

We kissed.

"What happened to you in that Shadow Realm?" I asked.

She grinned. "I already told you."

"You're different," I said. "I thought I liked that, but now it seems you're a little too different."

"Drew," she said. "_I spent ten years in the Shadow Realm_. It's not like I'm some sort of demonic impersonator from the region of Kral or anything."

I stared at her in suspicion. "The what?"

But then I realized that comic books always tend to go in that sort of direction, so I said, "Never mind."

She unscrewed the trident from the rod, slipping it into her panties. "Let's go back downstairs. I think we'll both be in for a very interesting time."

"Excuse me," cried a strange voice.

I looked around for a moment before noticing an incredibly short figure clad in a hat, a scarf and a rumpled coat.

I frowned at him. "Uh...hello?"

"Are you Drew Deebes?" the stranger asked.

"No," Cupcake said. "He's the Bird King."

"I might be Drew Deebes," I blurted. "Who wants to know?"

The little person lifted their hat and I saw a bald peach colored cartoon guy with Coke bottle glasses and a round nose.

"My name is _Whiskers_, and I need your help. The lives of everyone in the real world could very well be in danger."

I rolled my eyes. "Is this _real_ danger we're talking about? Or are we talking about rescuing little birdies from a sweat shop?"

Cupcake scowled at me, putting her hands on her hips.

"Oh, the danger is _real_, all right," Whiskers said. "I only _wish_ that it wasn't."

"Does it have anything to do with Disneyland?"

"Mr. Deebes," Whiskers said. "In a matter of hours, what happened in Disneyland will look like...Disneyland, in comparison."

I furrowed my brow in puzzlement. "I'm not sure I follow."

"Two Spikes have already been removed from their rightful place. You have to stop that woman from taking any more! The power will weaken the stability of both universes, ending life as we know it forever!"

"That sounds dangerous," I deadpanned, not quite taking him seriously.

Whiskers turned red, narrowing his eyes at me. "Are you going to help me, or are you going to mock?"

"I don't know," I said. "I'm leaning toward the mocking right now. What could be worse than smashing a bunch of tourists with Spaceship Earth?"

"Mr. Deebes, Have you heard _anything_ about Ghermanntown?"

I gave him a blank look. "Is that part of the theme park?"


	68. Chapter 68: Nutzi Land

Jessica

* * *

Senior citizen Nazis. Easy, right? Just push them over or something, grab the Spike, and be on your way.

That was the theory.

The problem was the Fuhrer, that, and his army of animated Nazi-esque Lion King hyenas that growled behind him.

None of them were Whoopi Goldberg. Half of them had on brown shirts and walked on two legs.

"Uh, hi, Mr. H," I said diplomatically. "_You're looking well! _Tell me, were you originally a doodle, or did someone stab you with a Spike like Walt Disney?"

"I am myself," he said. "My surgeons did a fine job faking my suicide. Disney is a fool. You do not need to kill yourself to harness the Spike's power. I merely channeled its energy to preserve my youth and create an army. Already we come very close to amassing enough power to vaporize your `Pentagon' and establish Fourth Reichstag."

"Can I ask you something, Hitty?" I said. "Why Ghermanntown? Why this quaint little wine town in the middle of nowhere?"

Hitler shrugged. "I enjoy the taste of wine, and the town reminds me of golden times in Deutschland. Plus wine helps cover my overhead."

"Are you really an alien named Mizo?" I asked.

Hitler screwed up his face. "Vas?"

I shrugged. "It was something they said in _The Tommorow People_. Never mind."

He pulled out a dangerous looking real burp gun. I'm not talking about some cutesy cartoon weapon, I'm talking about grandpa's version of the machine gun, with the little canister.

"Now. You will give me the Spike you carry, or you will die."

Misty tried to shoot him, but Adolf fired first, leaving my friend screaming and clutching her wrist as ink poured onto the floor.

"I have been observing you ever since you arrived at Viktors," he said. "I know your weaknesses, and I know you have something that belongs to me. I could kill you right now, but I am a benevolent Fuhrer. Hand the Spike over, and I will allow you and your friends to live."

"No deal," I said. "As much as I enjoy being a villainess, I draw the line at joining the Aryan Nation."

He pointed the gun at my boyfriend. "This is not a negotiation. You have something I want, and you will give it to me. Cooperate and you shall have a long and prosperous life. Disobey, and you shall die."

I should have kept the Spike in my bikini. It would have been safer.

"I...don't know where it is," I lied.

Hitler waved his gun to his hyenas, and we were surrounded.

Our weapons were confiscated, the Spike was stolen, and a group of armed guards put us in handcuffs, forcing us to march further down the brick corridor.

At the sight of all this evil, my baby started crying immediately.

Chad bounced him and tried to calm him down, but it didn't work.

He stopped in the middle of the tunnel. "Isosceles is upset," he said. "I'm going to take him upstairs."

Hitler and two of his hyenas pointed guns at him. "I would do that if I were you."

"Isosceles needs to be changed," he insisted. "I saw a changing station upstairs."

Hitler shook his head irritably. "Schpline, schpline! Leave us! Take care of your _doodoo_!" And he waved Chad away.

"Make sure he actually changes the baby" he said to the guy with the walker in a loud whisper.

The two left us, but I was sure it had more to do with Isosceles making a mess than an actual rescue plan.

We passed through a room were people in hair nets inspected grapes to make sure they were quality and there were no impurities in the batch, a lab where old guys tried to develop more interesting ways to get drunk, and a room where a couple guys performed the dangerous operation of spraying out and cleaning the vacuum sealed fermentation vats.

"Once we have Washington," Hitler said, "I shall change the label to the symbol of the Reich. No more disguising our affiliations."

"Good luck getting a kosher seal on that," I said.

Hitler gave me a blank look. "Vas? _What_ seal?"

"Uh...kosher?"

"Is...this like a Bordeaux?"

I laughed.

"He asks if we make wines for the _Juden_," said the old brown shirt with the oxygen tank.

"Nien," Hitler said.

But then he paused. "Okay, maybe one case. That is all."

I stared at him in shock. "Because...you...poisoned it or something...right?"

Hitler narrowed his eyes, thinking about it. "Poison..."

He rubbed his chin. "Yes..._poison_. That is brilliant!"

I grinned. "So you _didn't_ poison it."

"Rabbi Kravitz is a very good customer of ours," wheezed the fat Nazi in the power chair. "He also buys a lot of pork sausage from the meat shop."

"We should put poison in his wine," Hitler said.

"He has done very good business for us," the fat guy insisted.

"_Fine._ We will destroy the Pentagon, _then_ send him poisoned wine. But for right now, we shall punish him for belonging to an inferior race by providing him terrible customer service."

"Begging your pardon, Fuhrer, but by providing terrible customer service, we could potentially lose money."

Hitler frowned. "I must think about this."

He opened a security door, leading us into a giant cave.

It looked like a military base built by Batman, except everything had swastikas on it. Rows of cartoon tanks, G.I. Joe style armored carriers, helicopters, jets, and combination vehicles.

Somehow, they had managed to acquire one real tank, a real Jeep, and a Howitzer, but all the other weaponry was ink and paint.

Along one wall, a machine steadily maintained a portal the size of a car, allowing a group of soldiers to carry more weapons in.

At the end of this chamber, we took a monorail to another cave, probably beneath the cemetery across town.

The entire place was one big control room, with a massive glowing map of various targets around the United States, and rows of computers manned by generic Nazi types from various cartoons.

In the center of this chamber, monitored by _GI Joe_'s in headed Destro and the darkly attired Baroness, stood a giant science fictiony laser cannon.

On the side facing me, I could see the Spike they were using for power. A socket slightly above this Spike was empty, awaiting its companion. Cords ran from the machine to a series of large electrical transformers. The guy clearly knew how to milk power for all it's worth, but any history textbook will tell you that.

"Um, not meaning to critique your brilliant manipulation of magical power," I said. "But if you really want D.C., why not just unplug all the cords and transformers and just direct all the power to your weapon? I mean, as much as I don't want this country under Nazi rule, I can't help but think that you are somewhat lacking in the planning department."

Hitler backhanded me across the face.

"Do _not_ presume to tell your Fuhrer what to do!"

But then, to Destro, he said, "Unplug the cables."

He took our Spike out of Misty's device, handing it to the Baroness. "Attach this to the machine at once. We will aim it at the Pentagon immediately."

The Baroness took it, giving him the Nazi salute. "Sieg heil."

A guy with a serpent headdress, Serpentor, I believe, pushed a button on the wall, and the ceiling started opening up.

You know how I said it was `probably' under the cemetery?

It _was_ under it.

The moment the roof opened, in came a shower of dirt, caskets, suit wearing cadavers, and granite monuments.

An aquarium full of sharks got smashed to bits, and so did several computers and a laser etched glass statue of the Nazi bird.

That did not stop the Fuhrer's mad plan.

The moment the roof was open, I saw the gun rising off the floor on a tall hydraulic lift. The Baroness had already installed the second Spike, so it was all ready to go.

"Are we going to conquer the world?" Misty asked.

"No," I said. "We're just going to make the world suck a lot more."


	69. Chapter 69: Deebes Place

Drew

* * *

Okay, so, not cool that Cupcake was turning people in to birds. But I also knew that there wasn't much I could do about it, which is why I hadn't really pressed the issue or fought her about it. If she wasn't going to do anything about it, how was _I_ to reverse their transformations?

Also, I didn't know my neighbors very well to begin with. People were always moving out, so I generally didn't get too concerned about what happened in the other units anyway.

But now I had someone with me, someone who apparently cared about the real world, so I decided to brave the subject.

"Uh, Mr. Whiskers..."

"It's _Professor _Whiskers, if you're being formal."

"Right. _ Professor_," I said. "Do you...notice anything...unusual around here?"

He frowned. "Your...friends...do not appear to be what they seem."

"You got that right," I said. "Notice anything else?"

"I, uh, no?"

"Let me just spell it out for you," I said. "A couple of my neighbors have been transformed into doodles. My demonic friend here thinks that's fine, but I don't. Do you know any way I can fix the problem?"

Whiskers rubbed his chin and thought for a moment. "Where are they?"

I knocked on Bertha's door, and the two doodle-fied humans answered.

Whiskers took one look at them, pulled out a laser gun looking thing, and blasted them.

I thought they'd be history, but a second later, I saw a pair of real people collapsed on the floor.

"They'll be fine."

Whiskers turned a knob on his gun, pointing it at Cupcake. "I have half a mind to vaporize you. With all the suspicious activity going on around here, we don't need doodles pulling unwanted transformations."

He glanced at me, awaiting my approval.

"Uh, let's not kill her yet," I said. "She's kinda my boss, she likes me, and she's cute."

Whiskers frowned. "As you wish. I only hope it won't lead to a disaster like your father's girlfriend did."

I glanced at him, but decided not to mention Amanda.

The professor cleared his throat. "Now that our little bird problem has been cleared up, let's get down to business. Two Spikes have been stolen from their rightful place..."

"So what do you want me to do?" I asked him. "Drive down to little Germany and kick some butt?"

He gave me this look like he might.

"To me, that's doing a little too much. I'm not a superhero, I'm just an average guy who has the misfortune to have a freak for a father."

"Actually, I have a much simpler task in mind," the little guy said. "I want you to go to a specific address, and make sure the Spike doesn't get stolen."

"Oh no," I said, raising my hands in protest. "No. No. Unh-uh. I'm not setting foot around that prison, _or_ that hotel. I'd rather not get into trouble deeper than I already am."

"Actually, I have a feeling their next target is going to be a _house_."

"Oh lovely," I muttered. "As if I had enough problems with Romeo in there..."

I stared at him and sighed. "So my dad's old place, right?"

Whiskers nodded.

"I guess..._I really wasn't doing anything anyway..._"

Cupcake cleared her throat, but that only underscored my point.

"Yeah," I said. "_I'm not busy._"

"He was only having sex!" Sneezer said.

I pretended he didn't say that.

I let everyone in my car, started the engine, and pulled into reverse.

A second later, I heard a series of loud pops, and we were suddenly `lowered to the ground', literally.

Using all kinds of cuss words, I jumped out of the car, examining my tires.

I saw nothing but lumpy rubber on rusted rims.

As I examined each tire, I noticed shiny wooden objects descending from the wheel wells like spiders, retracting little knife blades into their bodies as they blinked their ruby eyes at me.

I tried to catch one, but a blade popped out and slashed at my hand. They scampered away into the field across the street.

"I'm afraid the world's going to end," I said. "I only got one spare, and it's a donut. I'd suggest we hitch a ride on demon bird here, but she's kind of _sketchy_, if you know what I mean, and I'm not sure she wants to carry the added weight."

"I have a much better idea," Whiskers said, taking out a sketch pad.

"I once knew a bubble turret gunner during World War II who swears he saved everyone on his bomber by drawing a pair of cartoon landing gears. You see, the plane was damaged, so the gears refused to extend. They would have died, if not for the cartoonist on board. I did some research, and his plane was involved in the Spike tests."

He handed me a sketchbook and a pencil.

"You got the wrong guy," I said. "You want my dad."

"Are you saying you can't draw a circle?"

"Why don't _you_ draw a circle?" I said. "I don't see the point."

"Mr. Deebes," he said. "I merely want to see a demonstration of talent."

"_Lack of talent_," I corrected.

"I want to see that for myself. Draw me a tire."

Just to humor him, I drew a donut, adding a valve stem and writing Goodyear along the rim for verisimilitude.

The drawing swelled larger and larger, expanding out of the paper. It nearly fell out of my hands and rolled down the street before I grabbed hold of it again.

Naturally, I had to use the tire jack and remove the flat tires to put on these rather suspicious looking ones. Whiskers suggested I draw a tire jack, but I thought that was taking it a little too far.

I drew three more tires, embellishing them with patches and candy sprinkles and a crude imitation of the Michelin Man as a joke.

The tires actually worked. They suspended the car, even withstood me kicking them.

"I still think this is a bad idea," I said. "But it seems to be working..."

We got back in the car, and drove a few blocks.

The car crashed down on the pavement in front of a janitorial supply company and an abandoned Blockbuster.

I looked out the window. "The tires are gone."

"Try singing a song," said Cupcake.

Rolling my eyes, I pushed power on my CD player and started singing along to _Mystery Walk_ by Omar and the Howlers.

At first, this did nothing, but then, a couple minutes into the song, the car started rising up off the pavement.

The drive got even smoother as we went through the rest of my mix CD, especially Abba's _Eagle's Serenade_, you know, because of my passenger.

In fact, my car actually grew feathers, as did the tires, which should have screwed up the traction, but didn't.

We arrived at dad's old place a couple minutes later.

Of course, the car collapsed on the driveway the moment I turned off the car.

I really didn't want to knock on the door, but Whiskers did, several times.

Cupcake assembled her magical staff.

"The pot's not mine!" a muffled voice yelled from behind the door. "I don't know how it got in the car! I swear!"

He must have looked through the window or something, for then the door cracked open, and the boyfriend was glaring at me.

"I thought I told you not to come back here!" he yelled.

Cupcake turned him into a woodpecker.

"Stop that!" I cried.

Whiskers changed the guy back to normal. "Our apologies, sir. We're trying to save the world."

Greg just gawked at us, struggling to find an adequate response.

Whiskers took out a little computer, following a glowing diagram to the back of the structure.

A lot of houses in Las Vegas don't have basements. I'm not sure why this rental property did. My guess was the mafia wanted a convenient place to hide bodies.

It wasn't a big basement, and there was junk all over the place, broken bicycles, boxes of old clothing, broken guitars, picture frames, used art supplies, vinyl LP's that would have been valuable, had they not been in such poor condition, and a collection of Dane's art in a variety of media.

Whiskers led us across the concrete floor, comparing his location to the screen.

He stopped in the middle.

"Aha! There it is! Still secure in its hiding spot!"

He pulled out a pair of chairs that looked like discards from a bar. "Now we wait."

We just sat there, staring at each other.

I'd say this was pretty much a wasted day, the moment I left Cool World, and it wasn't getting any less pointless.

Cupcake sat down in my lap, rubbing her body against me. Sneezer, in the meantime, just sat in his chair, giving me this look like he were expecting me to turn into the rat at any moment.

"So, uh, Whiskers," I said. "Did you draw all that weird shit all over that hotel room? The cat eating the mouse, the juggler and all that?"

The professor frowned. "I..._may_ have. That room was supposed to be sealed."

"So you made the spikes, and Cool World."

"It was an experiment, with unforeseen consequences."

"Can any of this be reversed? Like the spikes, for example?"

"Not without destroying everyone and everything in Cool World, including your sister." He dug an abstract painting out of a box, staring at it absently. "I'm over one hundred years old. The spikes are the only thing keeping me alive and healthy. You can understand why I would be hesitant to end this."

"So how are we supposed to stop these things if we can't reverse their power?"

"I believe returning them to where they belong is a step in the right direction."

"But what happens if someone else comes along and removes them again?"

"I have been studying this matter for decades, but it is difficult without an actual Spike to examine."

"Perhaps _this_ will help."

Cupcake spun her staff upside down, slamming the tines into the concrete.

A crack appeared in the floor around it, spreading out, expanding into dozens of spiderweb cracks.

"What are you doing!" Whiskers cried in alarm.

Cupcake picked up a shovel, tossing aside pieces of concrete. "What does it look like?"

"No," Whiskers said. "The Spike must remain where it is!"

Cupcake picked up the trident, pointing it at his head.

"I'm sorry, professor. I'm going to have to disagree with you on that."

A second later, Whiskers was a tiny green bird with glasses, flittering around the room in a state of nervous agitation.

Sneezer made no protest, but I certainly had one of my own.

"Hey!" I shouted.

Cupcake aimed her staff at me. "My king. Although I love to admire your handsome physique, I must warn you that if you impede my mission in any way, I'll shrink you to the size of a golf ball."

I froze, and for a few moments, I just anxiously stood and watched her toss aside chunks of concrete, uncovering a glowing head piece.

Trembling with excitement, the bird creature knelt down, placed her paws on the object, and her whole body exploded in glowing light.

When my eyes focused, she wasn't a bird at all, but a green demonic serpent creature, kind of similar to a dragon.

Still in the same costume.

Still kind of cute.

"You're not Cupcake at all, are you?" I said.

"I was wondering how long it would take for you to notice!" she said with a grin. "But I _did_ spend several days studying her mannerisms and behavior patterns.

"At first, I really didn't get what was so appealing or sexy about you, but after a few memory probes, I found the motivation."

She let out a happy sigh, like she were relieved at finally getting all that off her chest.

"So...you really are a clone from...whatever it is."

"Kral," she corrected.

I shook my head. "You know, I used to think that diapers were a turn off, but I think your _lying_ is far worse."

Instead of getting offended or ashamed or something, she only asked, "So you _do_ like diapers."

"I _knew_ it!" Sneezer said.

"It sounds like we're going to have _lots_ of fun back at the royal nest!"

And then she started picking at the Spike, trying to pull it out of the ground.

I picked up the handlebars of a bicycle, just the handlebars, brandishing them like a bat.

"I'm sorry, Cupcake, or whoever you are. I can't let you take the Spike."

She turned the trident on me. "I'm taking the Spike and that's final."

I didn't reply, I just marched closer, waving the handlebars threateningly.

"You don't want to do that, Drew. You really don't. I have a _magic staff_. What do _you_ have? A piece of bent aluminum?"

I charged at her, swinging it at her head.

In one quick motion, she knocked the handlebars out of my hand with the staff, and then the trident was pointing in my face.

"Hey! That's my rat girl!" Sneezer shouted.

I looked up just in time to see a distressed copy of Henry Winkler's debut album knocking her in the side of the head like a Frisbee.

Seizing my chance, I grabbed the staff.

She whipped it out of my hand before I could do anything.

I saw a flash, then my body was shrinking, smaller and smaller and smaller.

A large green hand grabbed me, and I found myself being shoved into her cleavage.

She got Sneezer a second later.

I could only watch helplessly, from her bra, as she yanked the Spike out of the floor, causing a stream of black ooze to come gushing out of the ground.

With Spike in hand, she marched upstairs, to destroy the world.


	70. Chapter 70: Power

Jessica

* * *

The weapon was going to destroy the Pentagon, maybe D.C. in the process.

I jumped out of the way just seconds before a heavy aluminum coffin dropped on my head, inadvertently colliding with some Nazi or another, probably from _Johnny Quest_ or _James Bond Junior_, judging by the comic book style of design.

As I lay on top of him on the floor, I thought about Chad for a moment, specifically how it would be funny if I reached out of my handcuffs and stole this guy's gun.

I actually succeeded in the theft, but it's kind of hard to shoot with your hands stuck behind your back.

I tried to figure out a way to joke the gun out long enough to shoot someone, but the gun got stuck in the cuff, and then I turned real, so my hand wouldn't go anywhere.

"Come closer!" Misty hissed to me. "I have a plan."

And so I did.

"Press your gun against my handcuffs."

"That sounds dangerous," I said.

"I'm animated, and that's a cartoon gun," she said. "It'll be fine."

I pressed the muzzle against her cuffs and fired.

Instead of doing what a gun was supposed to do in real life, under real physics, the real cuffs actually shattered, causing no harm to her.

Rubbing her wrists, she rushed to the death ray, climbing up the side of the hydraulic lift.

The Nazis opened fire, but she only dodged out of the way and kept climbing.

Attempting to give aid, I darted around the weapon, ramming my body into Red Skull henchmen, football style, firing random shots at Nazis the best I could with my hands behind my back, occasionally punching people when it was funny to do so.

When they fired at me, I dove behind a casket.

My actions served to divide the enemy's attention long enough for Misty to reach the top of the machine, at which point she set about tugging on the spikes with all her might.

Sadly, this was when Chad chose to make his entrance.

"I have cleaned the baby," he announced.

He looked up in surprise. "Misty? What are you doing up there?"

"Get out of here, fool!" she shouted.

I made myself think cartoony thoughts, bowling him onto the floor before anyone could shoot him, back first so as to not harm the baby.

Chad grabbed my gun, shooting my cuffs apart.

Glancing upwards, I saw that Misty had successfully removed the Spikes from the weapon, shoving them into slots on the sides of her bikini.

Her body glowed white, and I saw it growing larger and larger.

Now, instead of looking human, Misty kind of looked like that giant thing from the movie _Aliens_, except with a pink party dress.

The Nazis fired, but their bullets bounced off.

She roared, slashing the weapon, causing the nose to come crashing to the ground

But then someone got the bright idea to shoot her with real bullets. She screamed and fell off the gun, bleeding ink as she shrieked and writhed on the ground.

"Misty! No!" I cried, leaping to my feet.

I ran through the crowd of soldiers, blasting everyone that got in my way, until I at last reached my friend's side.

Chad covered me with a luger he found on an unconscious Nazi, shooting anyone that aimed at me.

My friend looked like she were dying, dripping blood and ink everywhere. "Come closer," she gasped.

I did, but it apparently wasn't close enough.

"Closer.

I placed my ear to her, thinking she had something super secret to tell me.

"I'm giving you my power," she said. "Kiss me."

"Misty," I said. "We're close, but we're not_ that_ close."

"Please, Jessica," she said. "This is important. Kiss me. We don't have much time."

Okay, so it's a dying woman's wishes, so I humored her.

At first, she was just making out, and I felt really awkward and embarrassed about the whole thing. Well, except for the fact the Nazis liked the show too much to shoot us.

But then I feel a large oozing object squishing through my mouth and down my throat.

I couldn't breathe. My arms flailed around in desperate attempts to escape, but the thing was already in.

Tentacles shot out of her body, slipping the Spikes into my bikini.

I swallowed..._whatever it was_, and discovered I didn't need to breathe. Maybe I was completely animated or something.

My body had suddenly grew plates like Misty had.

I hopped to my feet, spun around to face my attackers, and started kicking ass.

Like some comic book character, I flipped around the room, shot people with their own guns, quite a few of them with the real kind hat actually killed doodles.

When I landed from another flip and paused on a pile of bodies, I admired my strangely modified body, caressing my leg plates.

"Huh. _ I could get used to this._"

That's when I noticed Hitler pointing a real gun at my boyfriend's head.


	71. Chapter 71: Three Spikes

Drew

* * *

Evil Cupcake turned Dane's boyfriend back into a bird, marching out the front door.

From there she strolled up the sidewalk, waving her trident and singing that _Feed the Birds_ song from _Mary Poppins_, the points of her weapon shooting waves of white energy through passing cars and pedestrians, causing wrecks as drivers fluttered out car windows or flapped against the glass.

"Feed the birds..." she sang. "Tuppence a bag..."

I pushed my way out from between her breasts, flying around her head. "Cupcake, you have to stop this! It's not right!"

She frowned at me. "And to think, I was about to turn you into a handsome muscular young birdman with a large penis."

I swallowed. "You were?" Then I shook my head. "You have to turn these people back to normal!"

"Now Drew," she said. "You clearly are in no position to boss me around. In fact, if you keep buzzing around my head like a pesky little insect, I shall be forced to stick you inside my panties until you roll into my intimate regions, and your whole world starts smelling like tuna."

"Forget it, Drew," I heard Whisker Bird saying as he flew beside me. "She's not going to listen to reason. This isn't your Cupcake."

"Actually," I said. "She never was `my Cupcake,' and she didn't listen to reason, even when she wasn't an evil twin."

"That's unfortunate."

I flew away from the bird queen clone, gesturing for him to follow.

"What do you suggest we do?" I whispered.

"It's difficult to say. She is channeling the power of the Spike into her weapon. In these wimpy bird forms, we haven't a chance!"

"_I heard that!_" Evil Cupcake shouted.

She pointed at a tree. "You two. Carve me the image of the Planter's mascot! Now!"

All of a sudden, I lost control of my body. I was essentially a woodpecker, drilling away at a painfully solid oak tree.

Already I could see the tophat forming.

"Drew," Evil Cupcake said. "While you are mindlessly carving that monocle and that trademark nose and mouth, I want you to think about something. It doesn't have to be this way.

"By releasing C.C. Knicknocker's entire avian workforce, you singlehandedly destroyed my only competitor in the industry of wooden goods. For this you deserve my deepest thanks, _and_ a seat as company vice president.

"I understand how you don't like the idea of being Bird King. I don't like being Bird Queen much, either. But we both like _getting rich_, and _being big shot company executives_. Am I right or am I right?"

It seemed she released me from her spell just long enough to answer the question.

I whimpered yes. What else was I supposed to say?

"With this Spike," she said. "I don't need to resort to cruel methods to get my birds to do my bidding. I can make them carve grandfather clocks or Michelangelo's David with just a wave of my hand.

"And you, my pet, can rule this wooden empire by my side. All you have to do is be a little more supportive, and maybe finish what we started in your apartment."

"You may think your methods are more humane," I said, "But you're really no better than Miss Terious. You've just made the bullies and the whips invisible."

"Insolent pig!" she screamed, making a stabbing gesture at the oak.

My beak slammed into the bark like a jackhammer, carving out a stylized monocle.

* * *

Jessica

* * *

I glared at Hitler as he readied the gun to fire through my boyfriend's head.

Deprived of both Spikes, the man was real now, and looking very old. He still moved like a cartoon viper, but his face looked wrinkled and cracked as the dirt around my apartment.

"Let him go," I said.

"No," he answered. "You give me both Spikes, and maybe I won't kill your boyfriend."

I wished I could just whip out a Batarang or shoot him with Superman's eye lasers, or maybe have some random cameo character pop out of nowhere to save me, but it wasn't happening.

I'd have to figure this one out on my own.

Suddenly struck my an idea, I pointed four fingers at a spot I'd arbitrarily selected on the ceiling.

"See that?"

Hitler stared at me. "Vas?"

I pointed again, this time at some gear thingy that opened the ceiling. "This?"

He nodded. "Yah. I see it. Why?"

I pointed at the giant death ray with a vague salute. "See that?"

He rolled his eyes. "Yah. Vast is where you must return both Spikes."

I pantomimed hail falling from the sky. "See hail?"

He frowned in puzzlement, so I did it again.

"See hail?"

And then he got it.

Without thinking, he raised his hand in a cheerful salute. "Sieg heil!"

I responded by shooting his gun wielding hand.

Misty's marksmanship, I suppose.

"I told you cartoons weren't good for you!" I laughed.

Hitler screamed and turned his gun on me, but as he was doing this, I actually saw _my baby_ leap from the carrier around Chad's stomach, clawing and biting the little Bavarian in the face.

Isosceles was really tenacious. I think he takes after his mother. Hitler's nose was looking like bloody hamburger.

The man's weapon clattered to the floor, and Chad quickly snatched it up.

Picking up a real Smith and Wesson, I rubbed my baby between the ears.

"That's really good, honey, but now it's mommy's turn."

I picked my boy up with one arm, stomping Hitler's neck with my high heeled boot.

The aged dictator reached for a knife on his belt, but I was quicker, firing round after round into his skull.

I pretty much used every bullet in the gun.

Killing the most evil man in history? Not as satisfying as I had originally thought. Maybe I did it wrong, I don't know.

"Can we...go home now?" Chad asked me.

I sighed. "I know Misty is dead, but she wanted this thing completed, and I do too, if only to see what it does."

I paused. "Also, I think we haven't _scoured for local talent_ enough here. We've got to appease the Blaster."

All of a sudden, I discovered I wasn't alone in my own head.

Jessica, Misty's voice said to me. "I need to take over your body now."

"What!" I cried in alarm. "What? No!"

"Is there a problem?" Chad asked. Of course he couldn't hear her.

"I'm sorry," Misty said. "I didn't have time to explain this properly before, but we're sharing now. You got to use your body with my powers for awhile, and now it's my turn!"

"No, Misty!" I cried. "You can't! It's my body!"

"Jessica," she said. "I'm going to have to insist."

And then I see a chitinous visor dropping over my eyes.


	72. Chapter 72: Sketchy Characters

Misty made me pause over Hitler's body for a moment.

"He is definitely not an alien named Mizo," she said. "He just looks like a dead person."

We boarded the tram, speeding back to the big military base beneath the winery.

"Misty, this is a bad idea," I said as I watched her steer. "In real life, defeating a big evil dictator like Hitler won't end a war. There are other generals that want to retain power, and they can be just as impossible to conquer as their commander. Take Himmler for example."

"Jessica," Misty said. "You just killed _The Baroness_. I think it's safe to say we've won."

"I don't know. I mean, we still haven't killed _Destro._"

"That will not be necessary," I heard a voice say.

I turned and saw a metal headed figure marching out from behind a half track.

"Although I disagree with some of your methods, I am glad to see you destroy Hitler. I always told him, `Look, man. I just want to conquer the world, I don't want to wipe out an entire race of people! What's more, you'll be eliminating a huge segment of your labor force!' But he didn't listen."

"Um, okay," I said. "But stay out of our way. We're kind of busy."

"You got me interested," he said. "What's the top secret plan?"

"If I told you," I said. "It wouldn't be a secret."

"All right, Misty," I said. "What now? Where's this talent we're supposed to pick up?"

"Wait," she said. "I must do something first. It'll only take a minute."

She picked up my baby, kissing it on the mouth.

"Misty," I said. "I know he's adorable, but you can't kiss my baby like that."

She pulled away. I guess, technically, I pulled away.

"Jessica, I know you don't want me in your body. Hell, I don't want me in your body. This place is depressing, and sharing boyfriends...ugh, that's just not happening."

I frowned. "So you're going to transfer your consciousness into my baby."

"Passion flower," Chad said. "You are talking to yourself."

"Misty isn't dead," I told him. "She's in my mind, and she's trying to take over Isosceles's body."

Chad looked genuinely puzzled. "Why must she take the baby? The two of you in one body is much intriguing, maybe a little sexy, yes?"

"Um, Misty disagrees," I said.

He frowned. "Oh."

"Misty," I said. "But you can't have my firstborn."

"How about your second?" she said. "Or third? You've certainly got enough to spare."

"Well..." I said. "I suppose _that_ will be okay."

"Since your babies aren't here," Misty said. "Let's get going."

"Do you have any orders?" Destro asked. "I'm used to taking orders. Things get messy when I try to conquer the world on my own."

I nodded. "The first step is to acknowledge that there's a problem." I cleared my throat. I wanted to tell the man to buy some nice shirts and slacks, because his outfit is a little tiresome to look at (in case you're wondering, I have a brother, so I _know_ "The D" needs to go shopping) but other words came out.

"I need you to check on someone named Drew Deebes in Las Vegas. Make sure he's miserable, but don't beat him up or anything. He should be miserable already."

She told him the address.

Destro frowned. "Who is this? A president or a government leader?"

I laughed. "You're funny. It's too bad I'm not keen on the bald look."

I glanced at Chad. "Mostly."

"I am beginning to feel nauseous," Misty said. "Is it okay if I regurgitate using your stomach?"

I chuckled. "Let's go back to Cool World before I make you _really_ sick."

"We still need to retrieve some local talent."

"So you just want me to check on a...guy," Destro said.

I shook my head. "_Actually_, put that one on the back burner for a moment. I have a list of people we, I mean, _I_ need you to capture."

"Where is this list?" he asked.

I "ordered" him to show me the place where they kept Misty's weapons and other tools, then showed him the computer with all the requests.

"This is very vague," Destro said. "Kidnapping is easy, but only if I have _names_. I'm not a contest judge."

"Do you happen to have _any_ talent around here at all?"

Nodding, he led me over to a steel door with metal bars on it, allowing me to look in.

I saw a dark haired youth with a long nose and two silly looking braids dangling from the sides of his face. A Hassidic Jew, believe.

And when I say `silly', I mean that with the utmost respect, in light of his overall appearance.

He had on a tennis headband, jewelry, a sports jersey and baggy pants, looking all tough like some serious hard core criminal, except he had no tattoos.

Next to him I saw his cell mate, a fat bearded guy, most probably some kind of backup musical support person. He had a red handkerchief tied around his head, a blue tank top, and baggy shorts. The fact that the tank top had Star Wars on it, and he was wearing socks with sandals didn't help matters. He was "gangster as an Easter bonnet hat."

"Ben Nafisky," Destro said. "He claims to be Israel's foremost gangsta rapper. Hitler wanted me to kill him, but the man makes me laugh."

"He'll do," Misty said. "But I'd also like for you to acquire a polka musician." She paused. "Check on Drew first. I think this so-called `rapper' should be adequate for the moment."

"Hey, mamacita!" the rapper called. "Let me out of this loco jail!"

I stared at him in confusion. "I thought you were Israeli."

"I am! I'm a quarter Orthodox Jew, a quarter black, a quarter Mexican, a quarter Cuban, and a quarter Indian."

I frowned. "You've got too many quarters in there."

He nodded. "_I know_! It's crazy, ain't it?"

Rolling my eyes, I said, "You know, Orthodox Jewish isn't a race. It's a _sect_."

"Oh. Well, _you know what I mean._"

This guy was as sketchy as the penciled in mustache on his upper lip.

"But you can rap."

"Can I rap!" And then he went into a complicated tongue twisting rap that sounded suspiciously like Spanish with a few Yiddish and French words thrown in.

"All right," I sighed. "Open this up."

Destro opened the door, and I iced both him and his backup.

"They probably could have cooperated," Chad said.

"That was Misty," I said with a shrug. "Besides, I don't quite care for the music."

We carried them over to the portal, which was, even now, shrinking.

"That won't work," Misty said. "The portal goes to some military base. We need to go directly back to Master Blaster's jukebox."

"Fine," I said. "You're the one with the ideas."

She made me plug both spikes into the tricorder thing, and we were suddenly looking at a massive mortal that squeezed the other one out of existence. If I wanted, I could have driven a tank through Master Blaster's home.

"Nevada is a long drive from here," said Destro.

"_Yeah_," I said. "_Sorry about that_. But you've got cartoon helicopters and stuff. It should cut down on the commute time."

It was obvious he was displeased. "You know, it would be easier with the Spike."

"I _know_, but we need to put it in another device. I've seen your show. You can zip all over the world when you want to."

"What if I don't want to?" he asked.

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe educate people about Ghermanntown's products during wine tasting sessions?"

"You think I'd look good with a tie?" he asked.

It was then that I began to suspect he wasn't going to fly to Nevada. Oh well.

We carried our captives through the portal, bidding Destro farewell.

Once on the other side, I discovered Master Blaster had added a glowing decoration to his chair, and his cats, and my cat baby, were wearing orange prison jumpsuits.

"Misty," Master Blaster said. "Your team appears to have downsized."

"Actually," I said. "It's _Jessica_, and it's more like a reorganization."

He frowned. "I see. Did you at least get the Spike?"

"Yes," I said.

He clapped his hands. "Excellent! Excellent! With these three Spikes in my possession, my jukebox can at last cross over into the real world, and capture even more musical slaves!"

"What!" I cried. "I thought the deal was you'd let us use your mirrors if we brought you musical slaves!"

Master Blaster narrowed his eyes. "Surely you didn't think I was doing all of this out of the goodness of my heart! I don't do pro bono work."

He cleared his throat. "Now give me the Spikes."

"No," I said. "We worked too hard to get them. You can go screw yourself."

"Cats..." Master Blaster said.

All of a sudden, all three of his feline minions were pulling out guns, two real ones and a cartoon one.

"Hand the Spikes over, or they'll shoot."

I laughed.

"Find something funny, noid?" he growled.

"No offense," I said. "But your cats don't have a very good track record, success-wise."

"That may be so," he said. "But while you were running after those Spikes, all four of my pets have spent hours practicing their marksmanship."

"Four?" I said.

And then my cat baby pulls out a pistol, aiming it at my head.


	73. Chapter 73: Evil Plans

Three of my favorite cartoon cats, and my own baby, threatening me with guns.

"Jessica," Misty said. "You've got to distract them."

"Um..." I said. "Blasty? Can I ask you a question?"

The fat guy nodded. "To be fair, I'm not holding any grudges. In fact, I rather _like you_. _I just want the Spikes!_"

"_Okayy.._." I said.

"So what's your question?"

"Well, there used to be this show called _The Bug-A-Loos_. If featured a crazy witch who lived in a giant jukebox, who kept trying to capture a group of humanoid bugs as her musical slaves. The whole thing seems oddly similar."

Master Blaster paused for a moment, then pushed a button on his chair.

An entire section of a wall slid open, revealing a giant sized picture of the witch I'd mentioned, Benita Bizarre.

"_My mother_," he said with a proud smile. "I inherited the jukebox from her, adding some machinery to make the place float."

"She was an interesting lady," I said.

He sighed. "Yes she was."

"So who's the father?"

He opened another wall panel, showing me another big portrait.

...Of Mr. Spacely, CEO of Spacely Sprockets.

"Wow," I said. "So...this sleeping with cartoon characters...it's older than Jack Deebes, I take it."

Master Blaster only shrugged.

"How come you don't flicker? I slept with Chad, and _I_ flickered."

"I've been alive a long time," he said. "And mother was not one hundred percent human. It seems the change projected outward, in the form of my control over mirrors."

"What about the Nazi mouse?" I asked. "Benita had a gay Nazi mouse. He wore a sparkly hat with the Bebe logo on it."

"I don't like to talk about him," Master Blaster said. "Or about _him and my mother_." He paused. "He's actually _bi_."

"Well," I said. "You have nice parents."

I walked up to my cat baby. "You wouldn't shoot at your mommy, would you?"

The kid looked like she actually might.

"Look, Master Blaster," I said. "Three spikes are great and all, but wouldn't you like an additional two?"

"What are you doing!" Misty cried. "Don't tell him that!"

Master Blaster's face lit up with a rosy glow. "There are _more_?"

I sighed and nodded. "And we kind of need the spikes to get to them. Could you please tell your goons to put down their guns?"

And so he did.

The moment Cat Baby put away her gun, I quickly snatched her up.

"Hey, _cutie_! How has old Blasty been treating you?"

"Hel-lo?" the baby meowed. "Hello?"

Not "Mommy" or "Dah dah." "Hello."

I rubbed her head sadly. "Mommy's going to do something a little awkward to you, but just go with it okay? It'll make sense in a minute."

And then Misty took over, forcing her egg through my baby's mouth.

All right, so I'm not a stellar parent. Misty wanted a second born, and Master Blaster has clearly been brainwashing my kid, so I thought hey, why not brainwash her the way _I_ want her brainwashed instead?

Come to think of it, all parents kinda do similar things.

The moment the egg was transferred to the baby, I felt my body begin to weaken, my arms and legs becoming realistically shaded and sensitive to the cool air.

My baby, in the meantime, was aging rapidly, developing from a toddler to a twelve year old in the space of a minute.

The odd thing was, as she aged, she suddenly had on Misty's costume, the cape and bikini stretching to match her body to an exact fit.

"What are you doing to my baby!" Master Blaster cried.

"Just a little improvement," I said. "It's kinda my baby anyway. To be fair, you _did_ make her try to shoot me. Plus I have other babies. You can take one of those."

You know how my baby had a gun? Well, now twelve year old Misty had it, pointing the muzzle at She Lion's head.

I still had some of Misty's speed, so I rushed to her side, grabbing the gun.

"Misty. Don't. These cats are my favorite doodles in the entire world. I'm not saying they're friends, but I really like them a lot. If you kill them, I'll never forgive you, or myself for letting you do it. Please. Use the icer or something else. _Anything_ else."

"But what are we supposed to do?" Misty said. "Icers don't work on doodles!"

Suddenly the eighties style visor wearing Cool Kitty turned into a gray statue.

Fat Cat froze into gray concrete a second later.

She Lion stared at the two statues, glanced at something behind me, and dropped her gun.

I glanced back and saw Chad, bearing one of those freeze rays from the cartoon movie _Light Years_.

Master Blaster's hover chair retreated from us.

"Please!" he cried. "Don't hurt my cats! I admit I haven't been the most loving master, but they're the only real friends I have left!"

"Master Blaster!" She Lion cried in surprise. "You _really do_ care! I _knew it!_"

"Look, uh, Blasty," I said. "No hard feelings, I hope."

"Hand us the Spike, and we won't kill your pets," Misty said.

Master Blaster's face flushed red. He clenched his fists angrily.

"This is extortion!"

I twisted my lip. "I...yeah. I think this is pretty much the dictionary definition of extortion."

The man sighed, pulling the Spike out of his chair. "I haven't figured out how to use it yet anyway," he muttered. "I only managed to open up a small portal. The Jukebox wouldn't fit."

He handed it over to Misty.

"Blasty," I said. "Misty and I still want to help you achieve your goals, don't we, Misty?"

The villainess stared at me like she didn't.

"Look," I said. "He doesn't want much. He just wants his floating house to go into the real world so he can abduct the talent he wants. That's not so much to ask in exchange for the most powerful energy source in the universe."

"What you've sent so far doesn't impress me," Master Blaster agreed. "I'd be happy if I could just get my Jukebox over there and kidnap a music school or two."

Misty sighed. "Oh all right. It's a deal."

But she took all the cats weapons anyway.

"Could you change Fat Cat and Cool Kitty back from stone, please?"

Misty adjusted a setting on the freeze ray and did so.

"How is Sleez?" she asked.

"_Busy_," Master Blaster said. "_Very busy_. Your friend practically has him running a daycare center by himself." He paused. "Speaking of which, I'm not sure he will like your new look."

_"It'll grow on him,"_ Misty said with a shrug. "Let's move your Jukebox. It'll probably make it easier for us to reach the next Spike anyway."

Misty dug a few devices out of her bug carryall, experimenting with the spikes and Master Blaster's navigational equipment. She opened golden wall panels and floor panels, dismantled computers and turned circuit boards inside out, but Blasty said nothing about it, watching with puzzlement and curiosity.

Okay, well, he did snap at her once, but that was only because she took all the buttons off one of his keyboards, turned it upside down and dumped all the dust out, which really wasn't helping anything but the cause of OCD.

The most successful result came when Misty fitted the three spikes into a giant gold pipe organ/computer in the back of the throne chamber. The large circular monitor attached to the pipes gave us a view of a massive tear in the fabric of reality.

Using an upper set of keys, and foot pedals, Misty attempted to steer the Jukebox through this hole, but the only thing that resulted was a thunderous banging sound.

"Three isn't enough," she complained. "We'll still need the other two."

She climbed off the bench, removing the first of the three spikes.

"Misty, wait," I said. "Where are you taking those?"

She said, "Along with us, of course."

I shook my head in frustration. "Don't you see? We did something like that last time. We had one spike, and Hitler took it and had two. Let's not make the same mistake twice."

"Then what do you suggest? Leave them here?"

I shrugged. "He can't go anywhere. It's as safe as any place. I mean, he doesn't want to destroy humanity, or your companies or pollute the planet. They're just submissive feline lackeys and a glorified record producer."

Misty frowned, but didn't disagree with my statement.

"I am not a lackey!" She Lion growled, turning red.

"You kind of are," Cool Kitty said. "We all are."

"Well." For a moment, She Lion seemed to be at a loss for words. "There are better ways to phrase it."

"Sorry," I said. "Anyway, Misty, how about we beam your big five spike weapon aboard this thing? It would make it really convenient."

"Jessica, you're fortunate that I trust him with the spikes at all. I'm not letting him have the Reformatter."

_"The Reformatter?_" I repeated. "As in erasing and rewriting data?"

"It's more like _saving over_," she said. "The population of earth will be reformatted with the beautiful bodies of the Zorbatron race."

"Will this effect humankind _musically_?" Master Blaster asked.

"No," Misty said. "The content of the songs may very slightly to reflect the reformat, but all genres will continue as they were. The change will only be physiological, so that the Zorbatron race can live again."

"When you say _content..._" Master Blaster said.

Misty sighed. "So maybe there will be more love songs about sexy thoraxes, feelers and spinnerets, but people will still have the blues, achy breaky hearts and a twenty one gun salute for those who are about to rock."

Master Blaster nodded, appearing to be satisfied with the arrangement. "Let's try to find these other spikes."

He nodded to Fat Cat. "Did you get the software patch installed?"

"Yes, your grooviness!"

"Wait," I said. "Fat Cat can program a computer?"

"He always liked technical manuals," Master Blaster said.

He pushed some buttons on his throne, and a large computer screen came out of the floor, showing a side by side map of the real world and Cool World.

I saw only a red blob in Cool World, obviously The Flipside, our location, and one solitary red blip on the other side.

"Wait," I said. "Why is there only one? My research says there's supposed to be _two_. One at Jack Deebes' old rental property, the other at-"

"The Union Plaza hotel," Master Blaster finished.

"I thought you only knew about three of them," I said. "Not that I'm complaining, I'm just confused about why you can detect them."

"Fat Cat just tweaked the algorithm," he said. "He was searching for alternate sources of power."

"So he's not a stereotypical dimwit after all!" I said, clapping my hands. "I had the guy all wrong!"

Fat Cat smiled.

Master Blaster clicked a button, and the image of a reptilian figure in a skirt and a strange looking polo top appeared on the monitor.

She stood atop the roof, directly below the scaffolding on the giant sign, holding aloft a glowing trident with a spike attached to it.

This magical artifact apparently had power over animated birds, for she had swarms of them flowing around her in waves, to the point where it blotted out the sky.

"She has one of the spikes," said Master Blaster.

"That's not good," I said, clenching my fists.

"Agreed," Misty said. "With that kind of power, she'll put me out of business! We've got to stop her before she gets the last Spike!"

As if hearing what we said, the reptile turned toward the screen, looking directly at us.

She grinned, pointed the trident our way, and a million cartoon birds burst through the monitor, filling the room with an endless flood of flapping wings and pecking beaks.


	74. Chapter 74: Full Circle

Drew

* * *

I could barely move. I had never known beak pain, but now it was tremendous. I lay at the foot of the Planters idol I had been forced to carve and just leaned against it, attempting to rest and recover my strength. Whiskers bird gasped and panted next to me, also exhausted.

Although I still wasn't sure I wanted to sleep with Cupcake, this experience galvanized in me a firm belief in animal rights, particularly those of birds. While it might have been true that `no good deed goes unpunished', I now felt the rightness in what I did to Miss Terious's sweatshop. After all, I shared their plight.

Evil Cupcake tsked as she looked down upon me. "I had such great plans for you, but it seems you just want to be another one of my mindless servants." She shrugged. "Pity."

She picked me up, shoving me into her underwear.

I tried to climb up to her waistband and hang there like it were a balcony on a boat or something, but she slapped me, and I slid down into the abyss.

It was infinitely more pleasurable to her than it was to me, bumping around her interior, bouncing off her labia as the various muscles tried to choke me to death.

"Now I know what a tampon feels like," I muttered.

It seemed like I was in there forever. I really don't know what was going on all that time, except I could hear Evil Cupcake chanting creepy occult sounding spells...when she wasn't moaning with pleasure.

Somehow, I managed to wiggle my way out of her vagina, squirming out a leg hole in her panties, which, incidentally, wasn't easy, because the material wasn't elastic.

Once out in the open again, I at last got to see what she had been doing all this time.

Evil Cupcake had not limited her terrible power to merely transforming humans into birds. All along the streets and sidewalks, I saw the large green glowing pentagrams she had created, shafts of glowing light exploding from their centers as demonic beasts materialized into the real world, overturning cars and smashing store fronts.

As I watched this happening, Evil Cupcake struck the ground with her trident, creating another.

It was hopeless to argue against her, so I retreated, flying far away from her as I possible could.

"Where are you going, Drew?" I heard a voice in my head saying, but I ignored her, focusing my thoughts on all the bad depressing things that had happened throughout my life, and sang _Paint It Black_, trying to be real as possible.

My feathers took on a dark, realistic shade, but I didn't turn human. I did, however, manage to put some distance between myself from her.

I found Whiskers Bird perched on a tree branch.

"What are we going to do?" I said.

"There doesn't appear to be anything we _can_ do, Drew," he answered. "That creature can hear everything we say because of her birds."

"Didn't you help my dad save the world last time?" I asked.

"That was different. Holli didn't turn Jack into a bird. He was able to use his own half doodle form to overtake her and put the Spike back where it belonged."

I sighed. "So what now?"

"I don't know. We can only pray that she doesn't go to the Union Plaza Hotel and grab the last spike."

"What a great idea!" said a voice behind me.

In true cartoon fashion, she had whipped back to my location.

A second later, a large green hand was clamping down on my body, and I found myself staring at her face.

"I'll give you a choice this time. My breasts or my panties."

"Breasts," I blurted.

She stretched out her waistband, dropping me back into her underwear. I could only shout "Hey!" in protest as I slid back into the depths.

* * *

Jessica

* * *

I waved my arms all around, trying to swat the swarms of birds away, but they were like flies. I staggered backwards, trying to get my bearings.

The Copy Cats resorted to stuffing them in their mouths, pulling out butterfly nets and shoving them into cages.

They were the most unusual cartoon birds. Some shouted for their children. Some were very upset, yelling about how they needed to get down to the bank or the dealer lot in five minutes so their vehicle didn't get repossessed, or they wanted to call the tow truck and get the police to take care of the accident they had. Not very happy.

A couple of them didn't even seem to be paying attention to their situation, the male bird arguing to the female that he was shouldering all the weight in the relationship, and how it's not working out, the female sobbing uncontrollably and yelling back how he's never there for her when she needs him. They didn't even care that they were parakeets, with wings. The guy even tried to slam a door, but there wasn't one available. Ugh.

And then the unhappiest bird of all lands on my shoulder, a weird oddly familiar looking robin with black hair.

"Jessica!" it cried in Drew's voice. "Thank God! Listen, you've got to help me! That thing out there has the Spike, and it's turning everyone into birds. You've got to do something!"

I picked him up, spreading his little wings.

"_You're so cute!_" I cooed, tickling his belly.

"Hey!" he cried. "Can you stop fondling me and help me? Before the whole world becomes a giant demonic birdhouse?"

"I thought you liked being fondled," I said with a smirk.

"_I might_," he said. "But now isn't the right time for that."

Typical Drew.

He pointed a wing tip at the spikes poking out of the pipe organ. "How secure are those things?"

The answer was "not very." The moment he pointed a feather that way, a kestrel clamped onto one of the spikes and yanked it out of the organ.

A crow grabbed the next one, then a sparrow.

Misty dug out several pieces of anti-bird artillery, giving some to me, Master Blaster, and Chad to use on the menace, but they didn't accomplish much.

"Stop them!" I shouted to Drew, but he said, "I can't! Evil Cupcake has power over all birds! She can make me do whatever she wants!"

I sighed in frustration.

The cats leapt at them with their nets, but the birds just chirped merrily and flew above their heads, zooming through the the screen they'd entered.

I grabbed one of the cats' handguns, firing at the monitor, but, being a magic screen, more or less, the bullet went right through, accomplishing nothing.

When we tried to chase after them, a cloud of flapping wings thwarted us.

The portal on the monitor turned into a tiny dot, then disappeared, leaving us trapped in the Flipside.

"Damn," Drew and I said in unison.

All the birds suddenly fell to the floor, hopping around with agitation and confusion.

"What's that about?" I asked.

"They're out of range," Drew said. "I feel it too."

"Well," Misty said. "At least I have something to rebuild my factory with."

"These are real people!" Drew shouted. "They have real lives and families! You can't just enslave them!"

I only chuckled. "Drew, there's too many people on the planet already, with too little in terms of resources. Converting a quarter of humanity into revenue producing cartoon birds is a wonderfully humane method of solving the problem."

"How wonderfully Malthusian. The next thing you know, there'll be railcars taking these birds to little shower facilities flooded with poison gas."

I rolled my eyes. "Drew, we're talking about large factories populated by little birdies, not wholesale genocide. We're not actually killing anyone. There's a difference."

"He comes to _us _for help?" Misty asked. "After everything we went through?"

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend," Drew said.

Then he did a double take.

"Wait. Are you Miss Terious's daughter or something?"

"Let's just say it's _something_ and leave it at that," Misty said.

He didn't care to ask for an explanation. "Listen. Do any of you have any devices to turn people into birds and back again?"

I glanced at Misty.

"No," she said. "But I _do_ have a device that turns doodles into one eyed alien birds. Would that help?"

"No," Drew groaned. "Can you at least...find me a ship that can take me over to dad's old rental property?"

"What do you expect to find there?" I asked.

"Whiskers had a device that can change people back," he said.

I shrugged. "I don't know. We don't have any spikes."

"I never needed them before," Master Blaster said.

"Really!" I said. I held Drew bird up to my face. "Would a _mirror_ work?"

I asked Master Blaster about it, and, sure enough, there was a portal to the Deebes property.

I brought Drew to it, just to be nice, but when I approached that particular pane of glass, Misty stopped me.

"Wait. We should find a portal to that hotel first. If that creature gets the last spike, there will be no point in doing anything else. She'll be unstoppable!"

I frowned at Drewbird. "I'm sorry. She's right. I can't help you."

"Fine," he said. "I'll go alone."

And then he shot through the mirror.

"Fatcat," Master Blaster muttered. "You're not very strong, and I don't want you to get hurt. Why don't you go after the little birdie, maybe try to help him out, and stay out of trouble?"

"Yes, your kindliness," the cat said.

"That's a good idea," I said to Chad. "Why don't you go too?"

"But Misty!" he said. "Already I have protected you from much danger."

I smiled a little. "I know. And I thank you for that. But Isosceles needs to be safe, and so do you. Besides, the Deebes place isn't that far from the hotel."

"_All right_," he groaned, and he also disappeared through the mirror.

"Okay, Blasty," I said. "Which one of these mirrors goes to the hotel?"

He directed me to the one on the far end, but as Misty followed me to it, I suddenly saw a jewel studded spiky bone boomerang embed itself in the mirror frame.

"Miss Terious!" a familiar sounding voice shouted. "We have some unfinished business to attend to!"

We both turned and stared at the visitor.

It was Cupcake from the National Baby Farms, but she looked a bit..._different_ from how I saw her last.

For one thing, her wardrobe looked bizarre, like she stole a costume from a _Mad Max_ or _Conan _character.

For the top, she had on a sort of tattered leather biker jacket that stopped at the midriff, with a couple one eyed animal skulls for shoulder pads. At the waist, she had another one eyed skull, hanging from a chain, which held up a canvas-like loincloth. For jewelry, she had necklaces of animal teeth and claws.

She was still blue, but paler, her eyes a solid white color, her hair now a lighter sandy brown, puffing out in a ragged sort of bob hairdo.

She had been glaring at Misty, but now she scowled at _me_.

"Actually, I have unfinished business with _both of you_!"

And she whipped out a long staff with bones and a cyclopean goat skull attached to one end, whirling it around like a kung fu master.


	75. Chapter 75: Fowl Fiends

Drew

* * *

When I flew through the mirror, I found I had company. First, a chunky feline stumbled out, then Jessica's eyepatch guy, obviously humanized by the sex act..._with a mutant baby_.

And then Whiskers somehow found a way to tag along.

The mirror was in a bedroom, but not Dane's bedroom. This one was also a mess, but in a different way.

There were Pringles cans, condom boxes, empty boxes of Cheez Its, jeans and socks and underwear on the floor, piles of fliers for obscure rock bands, a Ouija board, and a bunch of drug related paraphernalia, from bongs to cannabis t-shirts.

Fat Cat picked up a flier, frowning at it. "Are any of these new?"

I flew over to the paper, shredding it in my claws. "No. I'm absolutely certain of that."

"That sure explains a lot. We tried to go to some of these places and kidnap musicians, but they were never there, or the venue was out of business."

"Serves you right for trying to get up to date information from a slob's bedroom."

"Well, mostly we were watching the slob have sex."

"That's really pathetic," I said.

Whiskers Bird shook his head. "The transmogrifier should be downstairs."

"Yeah," I said. "The smell is making me sick to my stomach."

The weird looking baby was crying.

"Yeah," I said. "I felt like crying too, the moment I saw this mess."

I glanced up at the thing carrying the baby. "So. You're Jessica's boyfriend."

"We are _engaged_," he said proudly.

I rolled my eyes. "I'm guessing you slept together."

"Is it that obvious?" Mr. Eyepatch said.

"What is your name?"

He told me it was Chad Buckthorn.

"That sounds like a character from _Watership Down_," I said.

His answer was, "Who?"

"Never mind," I said. "What is that thing you're carrying around?"

"His name is Isosceles. He is my baby."

"You and Jessica, I'm assuming."

"Yes."

I felt a twinge of jealousy, but then decided the baby was hideous. Maybe it was better that I _did_ sign those papers.

"There are several more at Misty's base. Would you like one?"

I shuddered. "No...that's...all right."

Then I frowned. "You call her Misty?"

"She and I are friends."

"She tried to kill me," I said.

"You should not get on her bad side."

"I'm thinking Jessica must have picked you for your looks," I said. "Because you're a bit lacking in the brain department."

Chad reddened. "Perhaps it is you, not I, that is lacking in brains."

"Perhaps I should shove one of these ceramic bongs up your nostril," I growled.

"We need to make haste," Whiskers scolded. "Squabble later."

"Right."

The house was as messy as it had been before.

I expected Greg to have devoted all his energies to lighting up a bong in bird form, but we found him in his normal body, plucking chords on a guitar.

"Ooh!" Fat Cat whispered to me. "I've got to bring this guy to Master Blaster! He'd make a perfect musical slave!"

"I don't know," I said. "He works at Auto Zone. I'm thinking he's not the best musical slave you can find."

Fat Cat shrugged. "Master Blaster wanted me to start finding new never before seen acts. This would be perfect."

"Swell," I said. "But could you please find that transmogrifier thing for us first?"

Greg paid no attention to us. He was singing some song or another that he made up. I wasn't impressed.

"What does this thing look like?" Fat Cat asked.

"There!" Whiskers Bird shouted, pointing his feathers at the couch.

The gun was sticking out beneath a pile of supermarket fliers, takeout menus, bills and napkins.

As we stared at it, the Land of the Lost Stuff chose that moment to acquire a new treasure. Already I could see dark octopus tentacles wrapping around it.

"Oh no you don't!" I shrieked, flying at it.

I clawed and beat upon the tentacles with my feathers, and Whiskers joined me in the endeavor.

When Fat Cat rushed to our aid, Greg snatched the gun away.

"Ah-ah-ah," he said. "I'm tired of cartoon..._things_ busting in my door and taking what they want. You want this anti-birdie gun? You're going to have to do something for me first."

He stood up. "My girlfriend is still missing, and I want her back."

"I can't help you," I said. "She likes Cool World too much. She doesn't want to come back."

"It ain't my problem. It's yours. Bring me my girlfriend, and we'll talk."

"I can take you to Cool World," said Fat Cat. "You can be together there. All you have to do...is..._kinda be Master Blaster's musical slave forever._"

Greg stared at him. "You mean, like a permanent gig?"

"Uh, yeah."

"How much does it pay?"

Fat Cat frowned. "Well..."

"Not interested."

Fat Cat punched him in the crotch and stole the gun. Before the man could recover, the cat shot me and Whiskers with the ray, and we returned to our normal selves.

"Sorry about that," Fat Cat said, handing the gun back. "My offer still stands. Become our musical slave, and you'll see your girlfriend. I can't promise any pay, but we'll give you room and board."

Greg stared at him for a long time, then sighed, handing the gun to the cat. "Fine. All right. It's a solid gig, and I get to go to cartoon land to see my girlfriend. Lead the way."

"Excellent!" Fat Cat said. "I'll take you there at once!"

Greg took the cat's paw, looking like a parent from _Charlie and the Chocolate Factory_ being led to the juicing room by an Oompaloompa.

I turned to follow them, but Whiskers said, "Wait. We should turn the other humans back to normal."

"That's not going to matter," I argued. "Not as long as that thing has the Spikes."

Whiskers sighed. "You're right. Let's go back."

I rushed up to Greg's bedroom, but when I got there, I found the mirror had been smashed to bits, Fat Cat cowering nearby, looking miserable.

"Seven years bad luck," I muttered.

"I pushed him through," Fat Cat said. "And then something happened. There was glass flying everywhere! How are we going to get home now?"

"I don't know," I said. "We'll figure out something."

"I suppose we'll have to walk," Whiskers said.

And so we all went downstairs,and out the door.

Outside was a mess. Cars overturned, crashed over curbs, windows broken, stores lightened of merchandise, trash cans knocked over, garbage spilled all over the place.

Whiskers immediately set about firing the transmogrifier at every bird he could, which was great when they were actually animated. He shot a few pigeons, and they became cartoony and really confused.

He really had his work cut out for him. People fell out of the air, painfully at times, others staggering, with woozy steps,out of their cars.

He got a bit carried away with it, not noticing that there were demons stomping around him. He ran up ahead before I could stop him.

A blue-black demon hand clamped around the little guy's neck, lifting him off the ground. Another claw snatched his device away, and a cloven hoof smashed it to pieces.

"Whiskers!" I yelled, running at the creature.

My face had a toucan beak now, but the rest of me was normal, like a kid on a Fruit Loops commercial. I wasn't sure if it were due to the power of the transmogrifier being destroyed, or just me being a half doodle, but I did know that the professor needed help, so I punched the demon in the stomach and kicked him.

The creature just laughed and grabbed me around the throat, grinning and chuckling evilly as it looked at me.

"Bold move, _Bird King!_"

I grabbed at the demon's claws and swung my feet, trying to kick him, but to no avail. I became light headed, seeing stars.

All of a sudden, I saw a flash, and a big black rectangular shape erupted from one of the many glowing pentagrams.

At first, when I saw the fender, wheels and chassis, I thought it was the guy from _Evil Dead_, but no.

It was the Cat-Illac.

With a brand new paint job...involving skulls. Incidentally, someone had also nailed a number of skulls to the shell, weird looking monster skulls that looked like demons or goats with alien eyes.

The first thing I saw popping out of the front seats were a female cat in a ripped wedding dress made out of animal skins, complete with head wreath woven from blinking alien jungle plants, and a squat little cat dressed like a Viking.

"Put the Bird King down!" the Viking shouted.

"Riffraff?" I gasped.

My captor just laughed at him. "You going to stop me, squirt?"

"_Me and some friends_," he said.

My sister hopped out of the back seat, clad in a weathered bikini, boots, and a mantle of white animal fur. She still had the bunny ears.

She pointed a chrome plated gun at the demon, a gun that looked like Snoopy. A _Desert Beagle_, I supposed.

"Let go of them now!"

And then Dane stood up from the rear with her rifle, dressed in a replica of the costume Tina Turner wore in _Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome_.

"Drop the tax man! Now!"

* * *

Jessica

* * *

The bird twirled her staff, knocking Misty to the floor.

Deciding enough was enough, I picked up a gun and aimed it at her blue fuzzy head.

I didn't realize she brought help.

The moment I clicked back the hammer, a white figure knocked me to the floor. The gun went off, accidentally shattering a mirror.

My attacker was a mouse with a glowing club, dressed in a fur vest and a loincloth.

Oddly familiar, and kind of cute.

"Sneezer?"

"Hey," he said. "Aren't you that girl that was going to do it with Drew?"

I grinned. "_I might have at one point_..."

I ran my finger up his chest. ".._.But I really have a thing for doodles._"

I pulled him close and kissed him.

When he kissed back, I snatched away his club, beat him to the floor, and beat him unconscious. I could tell because doodles always have a big pointy hump poking out of their head when you do it right.

Then, for good measure, I threw him through a random mirror.

"Sneezer!" Cupcake cried, momentarily forgetting the battle.

Taking advantage of the situation, Misty picked up a staff from what looked like a scifi cartoon, knocking the bird across the face.

Cupcake stumbled backwards, but she regained her bearings, and returned with a flurry of spinning staff attacks.

I picked up the gun again, trying to stop the bird, but she suddenly barked, "Attack!" and all those weird birds came flapping at me.

I fell backwards through a mirror, landing on a dusty hotel floor.

The mirror toppled over sideways, the glass shattering.

"Guess I'm not going back that way," I muttered.

A white body jumped on my stomach, and I was again looking into two beady black dabs of paint, as a loincloth rubbed against me.

"Now. Where were we?"


	76. Chapter 76: Road Warriors

Upon seeing my gang of rescuers, the demon laughed and brought Whiskers close to his face.

"I'd like to see you try."

The moment it said this, I saw a flash, and one of the demon's calves disappeared in a spray of animated blood.

A second later, I see a whirl of animal hide bridal train, and the monster's other leg disappears.

The demon toppled over backwards, and I see an ax hacking off the creature's arms, freeing me. A blazing sword slices off the arm holding the professor, then the monster's head.

Riffraff grabbed me by the wrist, pulling me away from the bloody mess. "C'mon, house slave! There's a world that needs saving!"

He led me into the back seat of the Cat-Illac, next to Dane.

"Not that I'm complaining," I said. "But I thought I was the chauffeur."

He jumped into the driver's seat. The pedals were stretched out to allow for his tiny form. "No offense, but you drive like an old lady."

"No skin off my nose," I said.

I stared at Dane in her crazy shoulder pads and bikini costume. "Wow. So how did they finally convince you to come back to reality?" I paused. "Especially in _that?_"

She rolled her eyes. "Oh, I don't know. First it was _filling in for you at work_, and then the whole part about _Cool World being destroyed forever_. It all kinda wrecked my day. I _had_ to do something."

"Your boyfriend is looking for you," I said. "He volunteered to be Master Blaster's slave forever just to stay with you in Cool World."

Instead of looking worried, she just smiled and said, "Aww!"

My sister leaned over and grinned at me. "I told her about the Shadow Realm, and how a day here is like ten years over there, and that got her really excited."

"That place was _awesome_!" Dane laughed.

"We should go," Whiskers said, climbing in the back with us. "That thing is already at _that hotel_, with the spikes!"

Riffraff started up the car.

Amanda kept staring at me. "God, I missed you. The whole ten years we were there, I kept thinking of you."

She cleared her throat and straightened, I suppose, to not look desperate. "_You're looking good.."_

"Thanks," I said. "But it's only been a few hours."

I adjusted my bandage. "I could be better."

Then I frowned. "You seriously didn't spend ten years in there, did you?"

"What part of _awesome_ don't you understand?" Dane laughed. "I _made_ the cats' wedding from scratch, no pun intended. _I drew everything._ Even the honeymoon suite!"

"_That_ was a little creepy," Cleo said.

"Oh, _I don't know_..." Riffraff muttered as he drove off the sidewalk and onto the street. "It was kinda fun..."

Whiskers had taken a little book out of his pocket. The words on the cover said, _The Spikes of Power_. He muttered as he turned the pages, jotting notes with an ink pen.

I rubbed my forehead, glancing at my sister. "I still don't get it. Why were you _in_ the Shadow Realm to begin with?"

"It was Sneezer," she said. "He came to me as a bird, begging me to take him there to rescue Cupcake, who apparently was the only one who could turn him back into a mouse, and save _you_."

The cat took us through a wreckage strewn neighborhood.

"_That _was a fiasco in itself," Dane said. "He claimed that he instinctively knew her location, because he was a bird, but he didn't. After we went through the Star of David in your dad's basement, we spent days just wandering around, getting lost.

"I ended up drawing a lot of compasses with different media, like your sister's blood."

"That one actually worked," Amanda said. "But it brought us to a magical portal to the real world that closed as we approached it."

"It was like we were in that old Dungeons and Dragons cartoon or something," Dane groaned. "After we wandered around for a few weeks, Amanda here suddenly remembers that she has Cupcake's business card stuck _in a secret pocket inside her thong_, and I can finally..."

She shuddered. "I drew a compass on it, and right away it turned 3D and we began our five year quest to save Ms. Baby Farm. You wouldn't believe the amount of shit that went down. It was _insane._"

"See Cool World Issue 20," Amanda `explained.'

"Where's Hector, Wordsworth and Mungo?"

"Mungo fell in love with a barbarian," Cleo said. "Hector and Wordsworth are ruling our Shadow Realm fiefdom in our absence."

"They insisted," Riffraff said. "The girls are _very pretty._"

"Wow. I see you also took the car."

"Your dad had a secret garage door connected to the basement."

"Of course he does," I said with a roll of my eyes. "So where's Sneezer?"

Amanda frowned. "I thought he rescued you."

Riffraff slammed on the brakes. "He's not with you?"

I shook my head. "I don't know. He took off when I was a birdie."

The Viking cat sighed and stepped on the gas.

"He and Cupcake were supposed to take the Mirror of Shades to your location," Amanda said.

I furrowed my brow. "I didn't see anything. The only people that rescued me were named Master Blaster and Fat Cat. Miss Terious was with them."

Everyone in the car, including the driver, turned around and gawked at me.

"Miss Terious!"

I shrugged. "She's friends with Jessica, my old girlfriend."

"That...doesn't sound good," Amanda said.

"No it doesn't," Dane agreed.

I frowned at Riffraff. "Eyes on the road, cat. This car is animated, but I don't like accidents."

The next few minutes played out like a video game. As Riffraff weaved in and around cars, cars in motion, wrecked or parked, Dane, Amanda and Cleo took out guns, firing at every demon in sight with an unending stream of bullets.

Things were going moderately well, and we managed to knock down a few of the beasts between a Target and a post office, but then Amanda shot the wrong demon, and it uprooted a real tree, swung it like a baseball bat, and smashed it across the front of our car.

Our vehicle was thrown sideways, flipping over.

The ink and paint car rolled into a fancy fiat, smashing the windows, denting the doors, and setting off its alarm.

We groaned and crawled out from under our ride, staggering to our feet.

"We can still make it on foot," Whiskers muttered.

The moment he had said this, we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by large shadowy horned figures.

Amanda and Dane pulled out their guns and started firing. Cleo and Riffraff likewise drew their warrior weapons.

They slaughtered dozens of these creatures, but two dozen rushed in to take their place.

A red beast with one missing horn ripped Amanda's gun away, crushing it into dust.

A blue demon stole Dane's gun, shattering that one as well.

Riffraff sliced a black one's leg in half, but a green demon punched the cat in the face, sending him through the side of the Cat-Illac and into the trunk.

Cleo let out a banshee cry, swinging her glowing sword, but her bridal train got caught on something, and she was forcefully grabbed and thrown into a mob of horned creatures with a scream.

When I saw her next, she was being tied to a tree branch.

"Drew!" Amanda screamed.

I spun just in time to see a scaly horned Todd McFarlane special dragging off my sister.

"Help!"

"You're a superhero!" I called. "I'm not! Fight back!"

"I can't!" she said. "I'm human! Turn into the rat and help me!"

_"Amanda!"_

I ran after her, punching the demon as hard as I could, but he only shoved me to the ground.

I tried again, but accomplished nothing, just like the first attempt.

I sang a song or two, focusing my thoughts on kung fu, bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens, Sneezer, anything I could think of to make myself into Kimono Rat, but I remained human.

I hadn't noticed it much before, but Holli had actually cured me. Other than a few glitches here and there, and being turned into a bird, my humanity had remained pretty consistent.

Like right now.

At the worst possible time.

Dane ran up to me with a thermos. "Here. Drink this. I'd use it myself, but it has no effect on me."

I stared at the bottle with a frown. "What is this?"

"Holli gave it to me. She said to use it as a last resort. It's concentrated doodle. She says it will make you permanently animated."

"But that's just it," I said. "I don't think this is a last resort type of situation."

She glanced around at the huge evil looking figures. "If you can think of a better way out, now's the time to mention it."

Hearing another scream, I turned and saw Amanda being beaten by clubs and muscular fists.

The clubs were real objects, baseball bats, pieces of wood.

Amanda could die.

As I watched this scene with a growing sense of helplessness, I hard yet another scream, this one right next to me.

They had grabbed Dane.

I turned the thermos over in my hands, staring at it in dismay.


	77. Chapter 77: Rats

Drew

* * *

"There has got to be a better way," I said as I turned the thermos over in my hands again.

The whole situation seemed..._contrived_, like Sneezer or someone else had arranged this fatalistic little bit of drama to keep me wrapped around their finger forever.

They were asking me to give up my entire life. All that work to get myself established in the world, to get a job and a car, and a place to stay, plus all that schooling...it would have no meaning. Family and friends? Goodbye. Well, except dad and sis.

But then I thought about what the doctor said after that time grandpa took too much of his medications and spent an entire day staring vacantly into space. "The devil is in the dosage."

Certainly, gulping the whole thermos would "make Kansas go bye bye," but maybe a sip wouldn't hurt.

And so I took a little sip and closed the lid.

I didn't hear the _Popeye_ song, but I figured it wouldn't happen in the real world.

As an experiment, I sang the theme song to Hong Kong Fooey, and immediately saw my fists and forearms turning fuzzy. A kimono whirled around me like a tornado, replacing the clothing I had been wearing.

Well, I thought, no time to think.

I capped the bottle and charged at the demons that attacked my sister.

I did well.

Too well.

I feared I was human no longer.

I effortlessly dispatched two large demons with a couple well placed jump kicks, hammerfists and karate chops, then brought down two more with sweep kicks.

I killed one with a rock, another by breaking its ball bat in half and shoving the pieces through its skull.

My sister, wincing from bruises, staggered to her feet.

"Drew?"

I looked at her sadly.

She touched my furry cheek. "Drew, you didn't drink that stuff in the thermos, did you?"

I swallowed. "I kind of had to. But I only took a few drops. I should be okay."

"Drew," she said. "I'm not sure that's how it works."

I was horrified, but at the same time aroused by the apparent failure, so it was difficult to tell if she were right. Depressing things were supposed to turn me human, right?

I did that starry tear thing they do in Japanese cartoons again.

"You could be wrong," I said. "There's always a possibility."

"Well," she admitted. "It _isn't_ an exact science..."

I whirled around. "We gotta save Dane."

Following the screams, I rushed into a cluster of demons, knocked two out with some kung fu moves and a lockout punch to the crotch.

Four of the beasts were standing around my friend, chortling and looking like they wanted to do something worse than beating her to death.

With a snort, one leaned over her, jabbed a claw into the bra portion f her costume, and ripped down.

I stepped back into a fighting cat stance and screamed at the top of my lungs, which sounded outrageously girly.

Before I could take a step, I saw a green blur.

Someone yelled "Cowabunga".

There was a twirl of wood and metal chains, and one of the thugs collapsed on the ground.

I saw a flash of a blade, and a second demon fell over backwards, its legs reduced to bloody stumps.

A wooden stick knocked the third one off its feet.

The eyes of the bodice ripper widened in shock as a pair of sai buried themselves in his chest. He too collapsed in a puddle of blood.

And there they all were. The Ninja Turtles. The sword guy helping Dane to her feet, the others glancing back and forth between me, my sister, and the mob of monsters.

"Please don't lick my ass," I said.

And then, once I noticed my verbal slip-up, I quickly said, "I meant _kick_. Please don't _kick_ my ass."

I got a couple laughs, but the guy with the blue headband was scowling, and the guy with the red headband was looking like he actually might lick my ass.

"Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael and Donatello," I said, still not believing what I was seeing. "How did _you guys_ get here?"

Leonardo warily pointed his sword at me. "How do you know our names?"

"April O' Neal," I said. "She did a report on you guys."

"Oh."

That seemed to convince him, though I'm pretty sure that wouldn't be the type of thing their reporter friend would blab on the news.

"How did you cross over to the real world?" I asked. "The spikes of power are gone."

"The spikes of power aren't the only power that can extend into the noid world," Mr. Purple Headband.

He pointed across the street, where a familiar glass and steel office building stood.

It no longer said Ewes Bank. It had reverted to its original name.

"A dude with a red robe was floating in the cafeteria," said Yellow Headband, Mike, I think. "He led us out the back door. To here."

I shook my head in disbelief. "All this time I thought it was easier to escape Gillian's Island."

"It is," said Mike. "A lot easier. Those guys were idiots. If the dude can build a radio out of coconuts, you'd think he'd be smart enough to fix a hole in a leaky boat."

I smacked my forehead. "That's not what I meant."

"Anyway, Floating Guy said we were needed out here." The turtle shrugged.

"Where's Master Splinter?" I said. "Did you leave him at home?"

One of the turtles pointed at me, muttering and chuckling to the other.

"He'll be along," said Leonardo.

I suddenly saw a mocha colored shape speeding past, and three more demons come crashing to the ground.

And then I saw him in all his long nosed, crazily bandaged, fuzzy brown glory.

That tattered red bathrobe clad figure I grew up watching on the TV, complete with Shredder shredded ear.

All of this stirred feelings in me I couldn't describe. My heart was pounding, and I found myself short of breath.

The other rat gave me a low bow. "Konnichiwa."

Little hearts were popping out of his body.

I stared at him in horror. "Oh God."

"My name is Master-"

"I know who you are," I snapped. "I..."

I felt I had been a little harsh, and I felt like I should thank him for rescuing Dane, so I gave him a low bow in response, blurting, "Arrigato, Yamato san."

In case you're wondering, that was all the Japanese I knew.

All of a sudden, the rat looked angry, or maybe embarrassed. "You know my real name! How?"

Knowing this information was an ultra secret thing on the program, I said, "I...heard it while...living in Japan. While...studying...Ninjitsu. You were...famous...at the school. I, um, arrived after you left."

Splinter furrowed his brow, but before I could truly get into trouble, I heard a voice shouting "Help!"

Cleo was still stuck up in a tree, and the demons were playing piñata with her.

"We should go," I said.

The rat nodded. "Children!" he shouted, pointing a claw at the figure in the long dress.

"Yes, sensei!" Leo said.

He and the other three leapt into action, swinging and slicing and chopping and kicking through an army of thugs.

Cleo was hanging in front of a grade school. As I came closer to the lace, I noticed the presence of several tall, pale white creatures bearing guns, both real and animated.

I signaled for the turtles to stop, which they did, but then I see an ax whirling through the air, burying itself in the chest of a big purple and green spotted demon.

I turned and saw Riffraff giving me the thumbs up. I gave him the finger.

The creatures with guns opened fire.

The moment the guns started blazing, I ducked behind a brick monument bearing the name of the school. Frank Rushton or something, I think.

A fuzzy brown body joined me there.

He leaned close to me, gazing into my eyes. "What is a beautiful young rat like you doing in a place like this?"

I swallowed. "You did not just say that."

"But I did."

"You _did not_," I insisted.

"If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?"

I suppressed a laugh. "Splinter, you've been spending way too much time in the sewer."

"Then take me up top. Teach me how to be a civilized rat."

I had to admit, he was my favorite TMNT character, but did I _love_ him? _Like that_?"

"Just one date," he said. "Gojo's on eleventh street. My treat."

I trembled nervously. "This is not happening."

"But it is."

He took my hand. "Just once. This is all I ask."

"Okay, okay," I groaned. "Fine. It's a date. After we get rid of these guys with guns and save the world. This is so weird."

Suddenly, an unpleasant creepy voice behind the wall shouted, "Drew Deebes! Come out from hiding!"

It was Judge Myxo. He had returned.

In cowboy movies, the hero yells stuff back, but that's stupid. I just bit my lip and hid there.

"I have your noid sister!" he called. "I wonder what color blood will come pouring out her neck when I slash it?"

I looked out again and saw that the ghastly rabbit indeed had Amanda in his clutches, bone knife poised at her throat.


	78. Chapter 78: Schoolyard Brawl

The guy was about to cut my sister open. There wasn't a lot I could do but obey.

I guess I _did_ have some allies with me, but it was a hostage situation, and big demonic thugs were everywhere, presumably to back him up.

Despite Master Splinter's warnings, I crept out from behind the sign.

"At last," Myxo growled. "Our little eco terrorist shows himself."

The ghastly rabbit stood in a fenced in playground, in front of one of those geodesic dome thingies made of monkey bars. A couple bulky looking demons were amusing themselves by playing on the metal spring rocking horses nearby.

I glared at the `judge.' "Let her go! I'm the one who organized the attack on C.C. Knicknocker. She was only following my orders."

"That may be so," Myxo said. "But your sister and I have a history, and it doesn't feel good when you and your _friends_ shoot me full of bullets."

I crept closer, with my hands raised, because it was expected.

"Yes," Myxo said. "Come closer."

"Wait," I said as I stepped through the gate. "Aren't you supposed to be allied with Miss Terious, and not Ms. Evil Bird Queen and her demonic henchmen?"

"This isn't about either one of them," he said. "This is about _revenge!_"

The moment I passed the demons astride their majestic fiberglass steeds, the rabbit started quoting Beefheart lyrics again.

"Green inflated trees balloon into marshmallow soot, that walks away in faulty circles, caught in grey blisters with twinkling lights and green sashes pulled by rubber dolphins with gold yawning mouths that blister and break in agony."

I looked down and found myself unaffected.

I crept closer.

"The camel wore a nightie, at the party of special things to do. When the stiff wind blows, the flag don't wiggle in the part of special things to do."

I was still a rat. The loss of my humanity saddened me, but here it was a strength.

I sang Beefheart's _Observatory Crest_, something I had on my mix CD, but hadn't thought about until then.

The rabbit glared at me. "I see you've inoculated yourself against the psychedelic lyrics. No matter. This rabbit still has other tricks up his sleeve."

"So do I," I said, marching closer.

I was standing next to him now.

In one swift movement, I had my hand around the rabbit's knife wielding claw, elbowing him in the stomach.

My sister wiggled free, snatching up a real pistol that had been dropped next to a nearby jungle gym.

Myxo backhanded me across the face, creating a row of artful slash marks across my cheeks. If I were real, it would have just been an ugly wound.

"You think you've outsmarted me, but you're no more clever or powerful than you were before."

And then he quoted headlines at me.

"A woman who found her seventeen month old son dead in her hot stuffy car after she worked her seven hour shift as a Hooters waitress has been arrested."

"What?" I said, blinking in confusion.

"A twelve year old California boy was strangled by rope in his family's kitchen, apparently the latest victim of a teen fad known as `the choking game.'"

I laughed. "Seriously? You're going to Dan Rather me to death?"

"Three dead, seven hurt when gunman opens fire in Lafayette movie theater," Myxo said, looming over me. "Gunman turns `Batman' screening into real life `horror film.' A terrorist group posted a graphic video online Tuesday that showed the beheading of missing American journalist James Foley."

None of this material was funny. Myxo had intentionally chosen it that way to get to me.

I flickered real for a second. As reassuring as it was to know I was still human, at the moment, it proved to be extremely inconvenient.

"Amanda was right. I shouldn't listen to you."

And then I delivered a loaf of Kung Fu, knocking him backwards over the geodesic dome.

I jumped on the dome, leaping down on the `judge', but he was stronger, and I ended up getting thrown onto a seesaw.

"A twenty five year old Baltimore man died Sunday, a week after an encounter with police that left him with a severed spine."

Myxo stomped on the other end of the board, quoting a depressing statistic about unemployment. I bounced and fell back down as a noid, wincing at the pain it caused my head.

"Oh. It seems I have touched a nerve," he said, stomping the board again. "Unemployment!"

My head throbbed with searing pain. I saw stars.

Don't listen! I thought. Think about something else!

"Unarmed Maryland teen fatally shot by police officer, police claim he was `whipping his hand around.'"

He quoted something else about job losses, then about how Obama's federally enforced healthcare system was causing America's debt to skyrocket, but I focused my thoughts on my sister.

My sister!

The ball game. And what happened afterwards.

I thought about Extra and the first time I kissed Sneezer.

Sure, those weren't the coolest memories, and they were even a little bit disturbing, but maybe that was exactly what I needed.

Fur exploded from my arms like timelapse footage of grass growing put on fast forward. The kimono whirled around me.

In one speedy but graceful motion, I leapt into the air (from the supine position, no less) rolling into a ball like Sonic the Hedgehog.

When I pounded down on the board, the other end of the seesaw slammed upwards into the Judge's crotch. He shrieked in pain.

"Blister and break _that_ in agony," I mocked.

I leapt again, doing that frozen flying crane kick they often do in _The Matrix_.

My foot connected to the rabbit's head, and I did that bicycle kick thing they do in Kung Fu movies and video games, knocking him backwards across the playground.

He hit a tetherball pole, and, amazingly enough, the tetherball swung around and hit him in the head a second later.

Old Myxo was no push over. After having his ass kicked into a pole, he snapped back suddenly, pounding me with his fists, hacking me with his claws, slashing large rips into my kimono.

I blocked his attacks the best I could with my karate skills, but I tripped over a railroad tie at the edge of the jungle gym and fell backwards into the sand box.

Myxo reached back, pulling out a giant sword, which he probably could have used on my sister or me earlier, but for some reason hadn't.

He raised the blade, bringing it down, but the jungle gym was in the way, so he cut that in half instead of me, losing too much momentum to take care of both at once.

I kicked him in the crotch, but before I could rise up to strike him, he stomped me in the gut, raising the sword again.

I stared up in helpless terror, silently praying that either the sword or I would be animated enough to prevent a fatality.

Somehow, I couldn't imagine either one of those things happening.

I thought this was it. Myxo was going to take that big sword and chop me in half.

I flinched as the sharp real looking blade swung down.

But then I see the end of something sharp and pointy jutting out of his chest.

Myxo's eyes widened in shock, staring at it. Green blood oozed out of the wound.

I craned my neck a little and saw a small feline Viking waving at me.

A second later, a pair of sai bury themselves into his body.

And then my sister pops up behind him, pointing a real pistol at his head.

"Sorry, Judge," she growled as she clicked back the hammer. "You've been disbarred."

She pulled the trigger, and the rabbit exploded into ash.


	79. Chapter 79: Justice League

The Turtlemobile had been parked on the front lawn of the school. I always thought a secret garage in a city owned sewer was a bit of a stretch, but I liked the design of the vehicle, a big yellow van with a turtle shell for a roof, with red laser cannons and a secret springloaded panel that pops off and knocks evil ninjas flat on their ass.

We had to fight a swarm of birds to get there, but once inside, we were relatively safe.

April O'Neal was at the steering wheel. Chad sat in the seat next to her, gently rocking his baby.

Behind the two in front, there were two additional rows of seats, and a pair of benches along the walls. Expecting it to be crowded, I sat down on a bench.

In the back, Whiskers tinkered with some computer on the rear wall. He and Donatello, I decided, must have gotten along famously.

"I was wondering where you went," I told the kangaroo.

"I saw the Turtles unfolding their van in front of that office building and asked for help," he said.

When I shot him a skeptical look, he said, "That thing is not my friend any more than it is yours. She and her demons could _ruin_ Misty's company."

I almost felt like jumping in bed with the reptile, just to spite him, and `Misty.'

Almost.

I frowned, giving him a nod. "Sounds like we have a truce of some sort, or a temporary alliance."

"Yes," Chad said. "Perhaps it is that."

During our fight, Michelangelo and Leonardo had cut Cleo down from the tree, and she seemed little worse for wear. Dane and Amanda, however, had welts, puffy cheeks, and bruises.

"There are some drawbacks to being human," my sister groaned.

"Tell me about it," Dane said.

Riffraff and the Turtles climbed in, then I found Master Splinter seating himself next to me.

"Does it bother you that I sit here?" he asked.

I'm ashamed to admit it, but I had just been wondering what he'd look like without the robe.

"N-no," I stammered. "It's fine."

"I've just put the coordinates to the hotel into the computer," Whiskers announced to Donatello. "You should be able to find the place, even with all the birds and monsters."

April stared at the screen on her dashboard for a moment, then started up the van, bumping over the school's front lawn to the street. Michelangelo and Raphael took position at a pair of cannons, blasting demons, angry birds and other threats away from the doors.

Splinter smiled at me, wrapping his tail around mine.

"Full disclosure," I said. "I'm actually a man, and I'm not a doodle."

He squeezed my hand. "Nobody's perfect."

"You _have_ spent too much time in the sewer," I muttered, but little hearts were popping out of my kimono.

We hit a bump, and I found myself doubling over in pain. I flickered human and stayed that way for about ten minutes, gasping for air. For some reason the stuff I drank had interfered with either my breathing or my heart, and it was catching up with me.

"You were not..._shitting,_" Splinter said like some old guy trying to emulate what the young kids of today were saying.

"I told you," I groaned.

The sensei paused for a moment.

"Still, this does not change my feelings for you."

I grimaced. "Uh, thanks, Master Splinter. That's actually...really disturbing."

The Turtlemobile rolled down the Vegas Strip, passing Caesar's Palace and the Golden Nugget. People pointed and stared at us. Kids were shouting and waving excitedly. They had seen the turtles in CGI. They had never heard of the horror that is the Coming Out Of Their Shells Tour, so they were full of enthusiasm.

The fact that we had fans didn't bother me. It was the fact that half of them were cartoon birds, and they blocked the windows, severely limiting visibility.

"There!" Whiskers announced all of a sudden. "We're here!"

When I got out of the van and looked up, I was reminded of the finale of _Ghostbusters_.

Well, if the Gothic penthouse apartment in that movie had been downgraded to a sleazy seventies style casino hotel.

A towering building with a dazzling ray of energy blazing up the night sky like a light saber, surrounded by vast clouds of ghostly glowing amorphous shapes.

I wasn't going to relish the hike to that rooftop.

And then my dad made an appearance, turning pale as he stared up at the roof.

"Good Lord, not again!"

Before I could ask him how he got there, I saw Officer Harris walking up the sidewalk, making tsk noises as he glared at me, shaking his head.

"_Deebes Junior. _I knew you were bad news the moment you stepped into our world. How the hell did you screw things up this time?"

"Oh no you don't!" I said. "Don't go blaming this one on _me_! You want someone to blame?" I cocked at thumb at dad. "Ask his stupid neighbor lady, the one that blew up Epcot!"

"I heard you two were _rather close_," Dad said.

"_It didn't work out._ Her brain has a few screws loose."

"_That's_ _just terrific! _Another psychotic slut trying to destroy the whole damn world with a glowing spike!"

"_Five_ glowing spikes," I corrected.

Harris hit himself in the face. "That's it. We're dead."

"Not if _this_ psychotic slut has anything to say about it," Holli growled as she stomped up to the revolving door.

* * *

Jessica

* * *

The mouse kissed me, and I kissed back, but only for a moment before I pushed him away.

"Sneezer, honey, you're scrumptious, but there's the teensy little problem of reptile lady taking all four spikes of power and destroying the world and everything. Could we take care of that first?"

"Yes ma'am!" he cried eagerly, leaping to his feet.

"She's got a magic staff," he said. "It turns people into birds. Do _you_ have a magic staff?"

Seeing a stub of a pencil on the floor, I said, "I can _get one._"

Now, the only reason why I thought of this was because of Misty and Disney World. I'm largely animated, and there were some blank spaces left on the professor's dusty old hotel room that I could still draw things on.

I drew my magic staff next to someone's fantastic graffiti depicting a castle door. It seemed oddly fitting.

I got a little carried away, I think. My power staff looked like some ridiculous prop for an action figure, complete with skulls, rubies, intertwined serpents, retractable sword blade, and an acetylene torch.

When I pulled it out of the wall, and it turned 3D, I frowned at the thought of actually hitting someone with such high quality workmanship. Oh well.

The way to the rooftop was boarded up, and they had shut the room off from the rest of the hotel with boards and big pieces of plastic.

I really needed to get to the roof.

"Sneezer," I said. "Can you be a dear and sniff some dust? Maybe blow those boards away?"

The mouse shook his head. "Sorry, lady. I kinda took some medicine."

"Then you shouldn't be called Sneezer anymore. You should be Cave Mouse or something."

He shrugged. "Maybe you're right. But all my friends still know me as Sneezer."

Shaking my head in annoyance, I said, "Does that club of yours do anything besides knocking people upside the head?"

"Yeah," he said. "It can knock down walls and everything."

I looked around, searching the floor. "Where is it?"

"I think it's..._on the other side of the mirror._"

I smacked my forehead. "Beautiful."

I took a pencil and started drawing bombs. I drew some dynamite, some grenades, and those black round ones with wicks that they always show in cartoons.

I set a bomb next to the plywood wall, lighting it with the torch. It blew the wall to bits.

I caught the spike stealing bird master just a second after she grabbed the scaffolding on the big sign.

"Hey!" I shouted at her.

She turned around to face me with a snarl.

Then, with a derisive snort, she turned back around, climbing the scaffolds in search of the last spike.

"Not so fast, bird brain!" I yelled.

Since she ignored me, I lit a bomb and threw it after her.

The bomb exploded, breaking the scaffolding apart.

The bird master fell from her perch, rolling back onto the roof.

She growled, raising her trident threateningly.

I twirled my own staff in response. "Bring it, bitch!"


	80. Chapter 80: Clash of Queens

Jessica

* * *

Being animated is awesome. I seemed to have acquired combat skills I previously had not possessed.

When reptile lady came at me with her magic staff, I struck back. We got into an elaborately choreographed fight sequence. It was kind of cool.

"All right," I said as our staffs went crackety crack against each other. "Look. _Snake lady_. Maybe we got off on the wrong foot."

She swung at me and I blocked.

"We haven't been properly introduced, I said. I don't even know your name."

"It's Flo," she said.

I fought down a giggle. "I'm sorry."

I supposed this was why she turned to a life of crime.

For a moment, we seemed to be at a cease fire, or a truce, or whatever you call it when two staff wielding ninjas stop fighting.

"So..." I said. "_Flo_. What's the big plan? Covering all the world's cars with bird poop so nobody can drive again?"

"No," she said. "But that's a great idea."

"So what are you doing with the spikes?"

"Oh? Just using their immense power to turn everyone in the entire world into my little cartoon bird servants."

I looked at her like she was crazy, which isn't hard to do. "Seriously?"

She whirled her trident around, pointing it at me. "Yeah."

Before I could defend myself, I saw a flash and found myself shrinking to the size of a baseball, growing a pair of feathery wings.

* * *

000

Drew

000

* * *

"You know," Dad said to me as we marched up the stairs. "Your mother and I always wanted to have a girl."

I was a female rat now, hence the strange topic of conversation.

"That's great, dad," I said. "Really...great."

We could have taken the elevator, but, in addition to having too many people to fit in there, this way seemed faster, especially with me being mostly a doodle.

Dad was part doodle, so he kept up with me, which was kind of annoying.

Chad, Dane and Amanda took the elevator, which was probably smarter. We'd see who beat who to the roof. Holli was with them, as was Cleo and Whiskers, but Riffraff and the Ninja Turtles trailed behind us, followed by my fuzzy brown quote-unquote `boyfriend'.

"What happened to Extra?" I asked. "Has anyone seen him and Mac Daddy?"

"Not a clue," Riffraff said. "The bird population started getting nutty the moment the queen was out of the picture."

Dad glanced back at the rat, who was doing surprisingly well for an old guy with a cane.

"You sure he didn't kiss your ass?"

I reddened. "I'm sure he'd like to try."

"I would also like to try bondage," the rat said.

I laughed uncomfortably.

Harris and his spider pal were outside, scaling the side of the building. Before we went in, I heard them mentioning that there were `no clouds to worry about', whatever that meant.

Dad chuckled. "All these noids and doodles to take down one bad guy. It really feels like overkill."

"Maybe," I said. "But she's already got four spikes and is going for another. Whatever we do, we're never going to be evenly matched."

"You got a point."

I turned human the last leg of the journey, slowing everybody down. I eventually turned into the rat and caught up, but it really did us no favors.

At long last, we stood in the top floor hallway of the hotel.

The moment we crossed the carpet, a big fat man in a sport coat and slacks saw us, wrinkling his forehead as he narrowed his eyes in confusion.

He appeared to be suffering from a hangover anyway, muttering incoherently as he stumbled past.

We rushed down the hallway, toward the wall of plywood that covered the demolished section of hotel. I once again turned fuzzy.

The elevator had beat us to the top floor. Dane, Amanda, Cleo, Holli, Whiskers and Chad were already there, waiting by the splintery (pun unintentional) boards.

Dane was drawing a chainsaw on the bumpy pieces of wood, muttering to herself as the others waited.

"I still think shooting it a few times would be just as fast," Amanda said.

"Maybe with a doodle gun," Holli agreed. "With all the chaos going on outside, I'm sure no one would notice."

"I hope Jessica is okay," Chad said. "Isosceles hasn't been fed lately. I'm a little worried."

"If I were you," Holli said. "I'd stay out of harm's way, and get your milk later."

Amanda rolled her eyes. "No, mom. If he were you, he'd leave the baby crying on the floor somewhere while he hatches some evil scheme."

Holli sighed. "Do we have to do this _now_?"

"I regret not bringing my tools along," Whiskers said.

He glanced at Holli.

"Don't look at me," she said. "I'm ninety percent human."

Whiskers frowned at Cleo. "And you don't have anything either?"

The bride shook her head. "I lost most of my fun stuff in the shadow realm."

From down the hall, I heard a voice shout, "Drew!" And I was knocked against a wall by a white body in a loincloth and a furry vest.

"Oh, my sexy karate mouse," he breathed as he touched his muzzle to mine. "I _knew_ you were in there somewhere, just waiting to come out!"

He wrapped his arms around me, sliding a paw around my buttocks as he kissed me wildly.

I tried to push him back, but my resolved weakened a little bit, and he kissed me deeper.

Master Splinter was not oblivious to all of this. I saw him clenching and unclenching his fists as he watched.

My expression when I met his gaze was both an apologetic, "I'm sorry I'm cheating on you" and "Help me, please!"

In a flash, the sensei whirled his cane and struck Sneezer with its end, hurling his loincloth wearing ass through the plywood barrier.

"Maybe you should kiss _his_ ass," Dad muttered.

Splinter wiggled his eyebrows.

I glanced at him uncomfortably for a moment, then entered the professor's dusty old suite, looking around.

Someone, it seemed, had already gotten rid of the wall with an explosive. Seeing the enemy with the glowing staff on the rooftop beyond, I pointed a claw in that direction. "There!"

Splinter twirled his cane dramatically, then raised it above his head in a bold martial arts pose. "Hah!"

"Cowabunga!" I head the turtles shout in unison, also brandishing weapons.

And then the half shelled heroes and rat stared at me expectantly, as if to tell me, "Your line."

I blushed. "Um...YOLO?"

"YOLO!" they cheered in unison, charging out the hole with a flurry of weaponry.

"My king!" a voice cried as I followed after them.

Having suddenly reverted to a human being again anyway, I had paused near the damaged wall, waiting for my body to regain its animated form. As I did so, I felt a hand grabbing my shoulder.

Surprised, I whirled around and stared at the owner of the voice, a blue figure with a beak. "Cupcake? Is that really you? Or is this another evil clone?"

She shoved me down on the dusty bed, kissing me on the lips. "Would an evil clone do this?"

"Yes," I coughed, waving away a gray cloud. "I guess you don't care that these sheets haven't been changed since the Roosevelt administration."

Dad muttered something about it being exactly the wrong time for something like this. I couldn't agree more.

To my chagrin, Amanda, Dane and Whiskers came along shortly afterwards, giving their two cents.

"Not my idea!" I protested, but I'm not sure they believed me.

Behind the wall, I could hear shouts, and the noise of weapons clattering and clanging together.

Cupcake straddled my hips with her legs, rubbing her body against me as she pulled off my shirt. "How about this? Would a clone do this?"

"Yes. She'd _definitely_ do that."

All of a sudden, she stiffened, looking furious. "_Did_ she?"

"Almost."

The shouts and clanging abruptly stopped, replaced by a chorus of angry chirps.

Outrage crept into Cupcake's voice. "But you _had to_ know it wasn't me!"

"Not really," I said. "Not until she went crazy and stole the Spike."

"What!" she cried. "Another one?" That must mean there's..."

"Only one left," I finished. "We should go."

I heard a couple loud feline yowls as a flash of orange and white rushed past me, but that offensive also appeared to be short lived.

Dane, Holli and Amanda took up positions around the hole, firing shots. Whiskers was digging in his safe.

A second later, Holli swore, lowering her gun. "She can stop bullets!"

"It's just like _The Matrix_!" Dane said with amazement.

A second later, all those bullets came zinging back at us. Holli cried as one hit her in the shoulder.

"Dammit, that hurt!"

While all this was happening, the Bird Queen was busy kissing me, touching me, undoing my pants.

"Cupcake," I prompted. "Could you please stop? _Now?_"

The bird rubbed herself against my crotch. "I've been fantasizing about this for _decades_. It's almost a shame not to let things take their course..."

"_Cupcake.._." I said. "This really isn't a good time."

She ignored my protest. "Sneezer and I were discussing your phobia about diapers. We both think you'd really enjoy them if you gave them a try."

"So it _is_ you," I said. "Look. Can we discuss this later? When your evil twin isn't trying to turn the entire world into a giant C.C. Knicknocker factory?"

The birds eyes glowed a solid yellow. "She what!"

In a fury, she jumped from the bed, glaring out the hole in the wall.

"What whore! She took my staff!"

"That explains a lot," I said as I put my shirt back on.

"That staff contains all the power and authority of the great Bird Kingdom," Cupcake said. "Transformation was supposed to be a gift unto the most worthy, the most deserving of all non-birds." She glanced at me meaningfully.

"And in some cases, punishment for those who were cruel to my subjects, so they could fully understand the bird plight."

"So we're screwed," I said.

She shook her head. "Although this severely limits my power, I am still the ruler of all birds."

She reached into her loincloth, pulling out a gold tiara with an image of Extra on its center, placing it on her head. "If the birds will not listen to me now, they never will."

She put her fingers to her temples, looking like she were smoothing out a headache.

Out on the rooftop, I could see Evil Cupcake swatting at four green parrots, a brown buzzard, and a strange looking blue-black raven.

"It's me, my subjects," Cupcake said, rubbing her temples. "Gather your strength and fight this impostor."

The swarm of birds became agitated.

"Fight them. Resist. You are _free as a bird_. _And this bird will never change._"

"Skynard," I remarked. "_Nice._"

* * *

000

Jessica

000

* * *

Henry David Thoreau wrote a love letter to the thrush, extolling its beautiful singing.

The robin is a common but lovely songbird, one that can `outbop the buzzard and the oriole.'

Wrens, sparrows and finches also produce their own special kind of music.

I'm a hundred percent positive that Flo, in her long sordid history of avian enslavement, has never before heard the loud chirpings of the North American Bitch Bird.

Using all sorts of (no pun intended) foul language, I went Hitchcock on her, throwing everything my little bird body could muster into the attack.

It seems Flo wasn't used to having disobedient pets trying to peck and claw her face off. For a few glorious minutes, she was completely taken off guard, swinging her trident ineffectively at me like a fly swatter, trying to knock me down.

Flo raised her staff, concentrating really hard as she mumbled something at me.

My head got swimmy, like I'd had too many Jell-O shots, and I found myself flying towards the big sign with its exposed sparking wires.

I tried to fight, but the swimmy feeling pushed me closer and closer to danger.

Then the Ninja Turtles appeared, hollering as they made their bold charge at the enemy.

Okay, that's ridiculous, I thought. But not any more ridiculous than anything else I'd seen.

The distraction freed my mind from the force that held it like a vice, so I flew back for a second attack.

The turtles and their rat sensei were mighty, but Flo had all the spikes. She raised her staff, chanted something, and they all went flying back.

Splinter, Donatello, Michelangelo, Gauguin, Raphael, they all grew feathers and shrank to my size, flying around like a bunch of parakeets in a fog.

"Nice try," Flo laughed.

A minute later, I see two cartoon felines charging at her with Viking weapons. She made short work of them, too.

I heard shots being fired.

A bullet grazed Flo's leg, but she waved her trident at the shooters, and that was it.

I thought all was lost.

All this effort uncovering all the spikes, and I would end up stuck as a dumb little..._whatever_ forever.

Since I could see no other way out of this, I decided to go back to my old standby, "If you can't beat them, join them, then beat them."

I flew up to the reptile with a pleasant smile plastered on my beak.

"All right, Flo. You win. You can _have_ the spikes."

"Good ," she said. "Because you couldn't take them from me anyway."

Right. So, kinda pissing me off, but I didn't want to ruffle her feathers anymore, so I said, "Look. I'm sorry I cussed you out. I was, I don't know, stressed out from being changed into a bird.

"Now look, I'm the one who got all the spikes to begin with. I actually _like_ the idea of conquering the world, even if I'm not the person doing the conquering. I really think a regime change is in order, and you seem to be the best choice."

"Why thank you," Flo said.

And then she opened her mouth, shooting a frog-like tongue into a cloud of birds. A pigeon disappeared down her gullet with a human sounding scream.

It seemed her agenda was making a giant bird buffet to supersize her own scaly ass.

Uh-oh, I thought. That's not good.

Still, maybe she wouldn't eat _me_ if I played my cards right.

"So...um...is there any way...I can help you achieve your goal?"

"I'm good," Flo said. "But you're sweet for asking. Once I get this city taken care of, I promise I'll find a nice big cage for you to play around in, and we can talk some more."

"_Wow_," I said facetiously. "_Thanks. I think we've really got a rapport going._"

"Well _you're_ the one that called me a bitch and hit me with your staff."

"I _did_ say sorry," I said. "But I'll have you know I'm not your average human, or doodle. I'm not some peon that wants the world to go back the way it was so I can work at some low paying job at a tax office. I want to _do_ something with the planet."

"I see you know Drew," Flo said.

I laughed. "Small world."

"Did you two have sex?"

"_No_," I said with a grin. "Did you?"

"I got close, but someone stuck his checks all over a telephone pole, so we never got anywhere. It seems someone broke into his apartment and stole everything."

I snickered, covering my beak. "_Oops!_"

"Wait," she said. "_You_ did that?"

"I _consulted_ that," I said. "For Miss Terious. I'm a _villain's consultant_, and to be perfectly frank, you're not respecting my credentials."

Flo's hand suddenly shot out, clamping around my neck. "You sneaky conniving bitch! How dare you ruin my poor vice president with such cowardly underhanded scheming!"

"Now I _know_ you're crazy," I gasped, my wings making pathetic attempts to pry the claws away. "You're conquering the world, and you're talking about making _that weenie_ your vice president? And who is vice president over an entire world anyway?"

And then I hear _Freebird_.

A strange wave of power rushed through my body, allowing me to break Flo's grip by merely puffing my body outward.

I flew out to a safe distance.

"Drew is very particular," I said. "What exactly did he see in _you_?"

"Besides thinking I was Cupcake?"

She suddenly turned into a cute little black chick. An actual person.

"He likes to keep things real. He didn't know that I didn't need chemicals to look this way."

I nodded appreciatively. "I admit, you're no Holli Berri, but I bet that turns some heads."

"Now!" a voice yelled in my head.

Without meaning to, I feel my whole body swoop down and slam into her face.

Flo stumbled backwards, falling over the side of the building.

She reached out and gripped me by the throat as she fell, laughing in an evil sounding voice as she slowly strangled me.

When we had dropped a couple stories, Flo gave me a nasty grin, and a pair of leathery wings burst from her back.

She shot up in the air above the rooftop, one hand on the staff, the other on my throat.

"You know," I grunted. "You could probably wield that staff better if you stopped choking me."

"I can do both adequately well," she said. "Thank you very much."

Um, voice in my head? I thought really hard. I could _really_ use your help right now!

If this is who I think it is, the voice said. We are going to have a _long talk_ when this is over.

And then I see her. Miss National Baby Farms.

She had a little tiara on her head, and she was doing that facial expression they do on _Scanners_.

Boy am I glad to see you! I thought. A little help please?

Flo is strong, the voice answered. I will do what I can.

I suddenly see Misty creeping up behind the bird, armed with some kind of spear with an ugly looking serrated blade at the end, a real one, and she was drawing back for the kill.

"Misty! No!" I shouted, but it was too late.

Misty's blade erupted from the bird's chest, causing her to spit up blood and collapse on the roof. Her crown rolled off her head, clattering on the tar and gravel surfacing.

"Misty...you idiot."


	81. Chapter 81: The Power Flo's

Jessica

* * *

I always suspected I was the brains of this world conquering operation, but now I had definite proof. I only wished I knew about this sooner.

Maybe I was also a cliche villainess, and just didn't know it.

Killing the only force strong enough to slow down Flo was stupid. But what could I do about it now? I was a damn bird!

I frowned as I saw Drew kneeling by the dying bird's side, looking sad.

I didn't know how sad until he kissed her on the beak. It didn't help anything, but I guess baby farm managers have to get love wherever they can find it.

"Nice friend you've got," I heard an orange cat bird say. "Is she always this bright?"

"She has her moments," I said.

I didn't notice it at the time, but Flo had dropped one of her spikes in the scuffle. I should have noticed it, but I didn't. I think it may have something to do with me nearly being choked to death.

I would have continued to think nothing of it, had not I, at the present moment, suddenly noticed a giant robotic figure rising up from the side of the building.

It had animal features, car features, and its head was made out of a spaceship. It looked like someone had built a cop robot out of Voltron, a Transformer, and Mazinga.

It had a cap with a badge on it, and a badge on its square truck window chest, from which an animated spider looked out. Instead of a face, I saw a domed spaceship window with a cartoon cop inside.

It rose over the rooftop with rocket boots, clenching its metal fists as it stared down Flo.

"Cool World PD!" it shouted in a booming voice. "Drop the spikes!"

"Never!" Flo shouted, twirling her staff.

The moment she fired, the robot drew a giant glowing blade. "Go Blazing Sword!" it barked.

The sword blocked the attack.

Flo roared in anger, using her staff to send a cloud of birds into the robot's face.

Then, as it staggered back, Flo twirled her staff again and said, "Hey, Robo Dick! Try this on for size!" And she shot him.

`Robo Dick' transformed into a giant metal condor, which squawked and pecked at her with its giant beak.

"Nice try!" the voice boomed, its pilot still not feathery.

The spider, well, I've never seen a bird spider before, but there it was.

Making use of the distraction, Drew's (ugh) sister came out with guns blasting, firing shot after shot at the monster.

The bullets did damage, but Flo just laughed and raised her staff, making her whole body glow. When the glowing stopped, her wounds were healed, and the Deebes girl was nothing but a Caucasian colored flightless bird waddling around on the roof.

_Holli Would_ picked her up and carried her away. If anyone else was coming, they weren't coming in a hurry.

I imagine Flo would have done something to Holli as well, but at that moment, the cop was trying to peck her in the skull with Condorbot. The two fought viciously.

And then I see Misty picking up Cupcake's tiara.

"Yeah!" I called as I flew close to her. "Put it on! It's the only way to stop this thing!"

She did.

All of a sudden, Misty looked like something the queen from the Aliens movies would buy in a pet store. A large eyeless bug-like bird, kind of like a canary looking thing, if you combined it with a beetle.

She raised her claws, as if casting a magic spell, then great swarms of birds came pecking and clawing at the reptile, knocking her backwards.

I thought we were doing good, but then I see her slamming her staff down on the rooftop, and there's a huge explosion, knocking me, Misty, the robot, and the cloud of birds away in a blast of brilliant light.

The robot fell off the side of the building. I and Misty were flat on the gravel.

I saw Drew swinging his arms wildly as he flew over the edge. I hoped he was okay.

As I was shaking myself off and flapping into the air again, I suddenly noticed a Goth chick, a real one, picking up a spike (Flo dropped another one) shoving it into a cartoon guitar.

The girl began playing something that sounded like Metallica, and as she did this, a flying golden amplifier blasted Flo with a wave of sound, throwing her across the roof.

Goth chick did another riff, and Flo went flying over the ledge with a scream.

Only a minute or so later, I saw Flo flying back up.

In her claws, she had her own `ax', and in a few flicks of a guitar pick, blasted us with riffs that I would compare to that of Zakk Wylde, blowing us all away. Literally.

What followed was, um, kind of like The Battle of the Bands, or that scene at the end of _Tenacious D and The Pick of Destiny_, where the guitarist faced off against the other in musical combat. It was entertaining.

Goth girl hit her with something in a Baroque style, transitioning into an Iron Maiden song, which really isn't a stretch.

Flo hit her back with something Led Zepplin-ish, though it didn't sound like _Stairway_.

It probably would have gone on like this for some time, and not really accomplish anything, but all of a sudden I saw the robot flying up behind Flo, raising its Blazing Sword.

The reptile let out a demonic howl as the blade plunged through her body.

But then she laughed as she started glowing, shoving the blade out the way it came.

When it was all the way out, she grabbed it by the handle, slicing the robot in half.

The spider and the cartoon cop let out screams as they tumbled through the air.


	82. Chapter 82: Signet Ring

Drew

000

* * *

It all happened so fast. One minute, Cupcake was donning a tiara and summoning birds, the next Miss Terious is popping out of nowhere, running her through with a giant spear.

Remember that door Dane drew to get to Dad's place? It swung open when Cupcake was doing her thing.

No, the _other thing_. Fighting the evil bird queen.

I tried to stop her, but I was human and `Misty' just knocked me aside with her spear, muttering something about Jessica not wanting me dead.

Sneezer tried to stop her too, but she slashed him across the chest, and in one quick movement, she shoved the nasty looking blade of her spear through Cupcake's back.

"No!" Sneezer cried. "My queen!"

Misty pulled the weapon out, casually throwing Cupcake to the floor as she stepped out on the roof to face down the reptile.

Since Sneezer's wounds weren't deep, he screamed and ran after her, but Misty just knocked him back.

I watched as she picked up Cupcake's tiara, placing it on her head.

She turned into sort of a biomechanical hawk or something.

Sneezer tried to attack her, but I held him back. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend!" I hissed.

The mouse sighed, giving me a reluctant nod.

Sneezer and I rushed to Cupcake's side.

"No!" Sneezer cried. "My queen! You _can't_ die!"

"I'm sorry, my good looking subject," she said. "I am mortally wounded."

She was actually dying. For real. I looked at her bleeding on the shingles, then at Sneezer.

"We were going to share a bed," he said, starting to cry. "All three of us. The Bird King, the Bird Queen, me...It's what kept her going all those days in the Shadow Realm."

"We were not!" I said.

Then, in a less insensitive tone, "I don't do threesomes."

I knelt down, looking in the bird's eyes. "I'm sorry. I can't help but feel responsible for all of this."

"It's okay," she coughed. "It's not your fault. I would never blame you, my king."

"Drew," Sneezer said. "True love's kiss!"

Sighing, I leaned in close, kissing Cupcake on the beak.

I thought it was fairly passionate, but it didn't stop her from being mortally wounded.

I thought I saw her tiara glowing with unusual brilliance, like that's where the power went, but it could have been a coincidence.

"It's too late for me," she said. "But thank you for making me happy in my last moments."

She dug a ring out of her cleavage, offering it to me.

"Here. Put this on," she gasped.

"No way," I said.

Then, noticing how heartbroken she looked, I said, "I know it might be your dying wish, but what if you come back to life and I'm stuck with a wife I'm not sure I want?"

Tears rolled down her cheeks. "Please, Drew. If you care anything for me at all, you'll do this for me."

Swallowing hard, I said, "Okay. Fine. All right."

I slid the ring upon my finger, and I immediately felt a sort of energy rushing through me.

"It is the signet ring of the Bird Kingdom," she said. "I meant to give it to you...in a more romantic way, but..."

She coughed up blood. "A noble heart will unlock the power of the ring."

Honestly, I don't know what was going on at the other end of the roof.

I saw a big robot fighting the reptile. The robot looked like a cop, and it had Harris's voice. Whatever he did was working until Misty knocked him off the building.

Then Dane made an appearance.

While I and the others had been huddling in the room, hiding behind a wall, Dane had been drawing a _guitar_, of all things. It all seemed pointless until the robot or someone knocked a spike out of the creature's clutches, and they had dueling..._guitars_.

Harris gets the bright idea of stabbing Evil Cupcake in the back, but she turns his Voltron sword back on him, and his robot is toast.

I caught a glimpse of something glowing as Harris and Nails fell below and thought, `You used a spike for that?'

Now, Dane's `ax' was literally an `ax.' It was golden dwarf weapon with guitar strings. Dane swung this at (I think they said her name was Flo?) and took a chunk out of her stomach.

Flo roared and swung her own weapon, and I had a flashback of the grand finale from the first _Highlander_ film, you know, that epic sword battle behind the giant sign on a rooftop.

Of course, Flo was animated and Dane wasn't, so she had an unfair speed advantage. Flo axed Dane in the leg, and the noid fell over backwards with a scream.

"Dane!" I yelled.

"I am doing what I can to restrain the birds!" I heard Misty shout. "You must stop her!"

So it all came down to me now.

I raised my signet ring, concentrating on...bird thoughts, cartoon thoughts, anything I thought would help.

Nothing. I wasn't even the rodent.

Apparently loyal to the human after their long years in the Shadow Realm, Sneezer charged at the reptile with a scream, drawing a dagger from the side of his loincloth.

The creature pointed her trident, and he became a titmouse.

No, no. The _bird_ titmouse. _The bird_.

I remained behind, searching for weapons.

Jessica's staff still lay on the ground. It was currently the only thing I had to work with.

As Flo raised her ax to take off Dane's head, I ran at her with this staff, keeping my mouth shut as I did so, as war cries had no effectiveness in this battle.

I swung the staff like a baseball bat, knocking Flo flat on her ass.

"_Drew_," she growled as she got back on her feet. "_You don't want to do this._ You still have a choice. Forget all this and rule by my side. We'll share the world. I'll even change your friends back to normal, within reason."

"I'm sorry," I said, raising the staff. "You've pissed me off too many times."

She flashed her trident. "I'm sorry too."

I made a passable Highlander. Although not completely animated, my arms kind of resembled the action figures I used to keep in my toy boxes as a kid, like, "Gee, I wonder how this Tri Clops figurine would look with Lion-O's arms?" Or He-Man's blue twin with He-Man's arms.

Unfortunately, the rest of me remained normal, so Flo drove me backwards with slashing and stabbing attacks.

I tripped and fell backwards over an edge, and found myself falling past the windows of several hotel suites.

As I screamed, I reflected I would have been better off if I had, in fact, been turned into a bird.

I'm going to die, I kept thinking to myself as I fell. This really is it.

But then I felt warmth spreading all over my body, and I started glowing.

A sea of birds swooped down, enveloping me with feathers. Thousands of tiny winged bodies pushed up from beneath me, stopping my descent.

"You should not be out here, Master," I heard a voice saying.

"Extra!" I cried as I caught sight of his fat little golden body. "Boy am I glad to see you!...Where were you all this time?"

He nuzzled against me. "I will tell you later, Master. Right now we must hurry. We cannot allow Flo to win."


	83. Chapter 83: Open Hand

The flock of birds carried me back up the side of the building. Along the way, I spotted Officer Harris, scaling the wall by means of his spider pal and a cartoon rope. He still had a spike.

"Hey!" he yelled to me. "_You_ look like someone who wants to save the planet!"

He threw the spike at me. "Catch!"

I didn't. The spike fell.

"Oh must I do everything!" I heard a familiar voice shouting.

A yellow-white bird that looked like Holli swooped down after the spike, catching it in her beak.

She flapped back up, placing it in my hand.

"There. Go stuff that turkey!"

A crow flitted up beside her. A crow with swirling black hair that...kinda looked like dad.

"Make us proud, son."

I concentrated and turned into a rat bird.

I did this only because I didn't know how to use the spike and didn't think it would work. My only thoughts had been, `I need my kung fu skills' and `I have to control these birds.'

I appeared to be male, with a beak and tail feathers, to fulfill the `bird king' requirement, but I was brown, fuzzy, in a colorful Mandarin outfit with an embroidered dragon, and I had on one of those little Chinese caps, with a pony tail. I was a _bird emperor_.

I thought about getting myself a long flowing beard, but I knew Flo would only use it to yank me around.

It was like I had the power of the wind at my disposal. When I clenched my fist with that ring on my finger, I zoomed up through the air, high above the building, doing a dramatic superhero-esque landing that made a crater in the roofing tiles.

As I rose from the traditional kneeling position, I noticed the sound of weapons clashing.

It seemed my failed attack on Flo had given Dane just enough time to get to her feet and come at the reptile with her ax.

Seeing Jessica's staff on the ground, I quickly snatched it up and rushed to the girl's aid.

Me and Dane made a pretty good team. We knocked Flo backwards, Dane chopping her on the side as I blocked the trident, or me striking as Dane blocked.

Unfortunately, Flo had two spikes on her person. She did a super jump, landed behind us, and I was knocked off my feet by a blast of light.

My staff went flying off the side of the building.

Dane and I groaned as we struggled to our feet.

When I turned around to face my enemy, I found a trident pointing threateningly in my face.

"Last chance, Drew," Flo said. "Give me a quick lay, and I'll forget this whole thing ever happened."

I stepped back in a fighting horse. "I'm the _Bird King_, lady. My _hens_ do all the laying!"

"Then you will die," she said, blasting me with the trident.

Nothing happened.

"That power doesn't belong to you," I said. "It is the rightful inheritance of the _bird people._"

"They are no people!" Flo roared in outrage. "They are only birds! I thought I understood what Cupcake saw in you during all those mind probes, but I was wrong! You're nothing but a scrawny bodied stick in the mud who prefers the company of his _sister_ and a bird brained _queen_ to a _real woman_!"

"Excuse me," I said. "Did you say there was a real woman around here somewhere? Because I'm looking straight ahead and I don't see any."

You know how a horse feels its oats? I was feeling my ring.

"Fine," she growled. "I'll just skewer your tender all white chicken breast!"

She reared back to do just that, but when she stabbed at me, Dane came in with her ax, knocking it away.

Flo pounded the roof with her trident and screamed, causing a huge flock of birds to bowl us backwards across the roof. Evidently, Flo still had some power over the bird kingdom.

I hit the door to the emergency stairs, smashing it in.

Groaning, I staggered to my feet, only to get thrown down the stairs by another wave of birds.

Enough was enough, I thought angrily.

I rushed back upstairs and through the door, letting out a war cry as I held out my ring.

The birds obeyed me, flying me closer to Flo, then blasted her backwards.

It would take more than that to defeat this reptile. Flo came back with her own swarm of birds.

I countered her flock with mine, and for a moment we resembled a scene from those _Green Lantern_ comics, or maybe _Harry Potter_.

A large black and purple bird flapped down in front of me, my staff in its claws.

"Take it, Bird King," she said in Jessica's voice. "It contains a spike. You're our only hope now."

"_Dane's_ here," I said.

She shook her head. "You're our only hope."

She pecked my cheek and flew away. I decided I liked her better as a bird.

I spun the staff, charging at Flo, my signet ring glowing as I willed birds to fly ahead of me, machine gun style.

Utilitarian as this may have been, I understood their beak pain more than anyone. They weren't hurting their beaks to make clocks, they were doing it for their _freedom_.

Our weapons clashed, and so did our respective clouds of birds.

We engaged in fierce combat for several minutes.

Dane tried to help, but Jessica was right. She wasn't much help. She soon became a stylized Gothic comic book crow that perched on my shoulder and pecked ineffectively at my enemy. Sometimes I would catch her admiring her new body.

I had ninja skills, but Flo seemed to have them too, on account of the spikes. I fell back, tripped over a bathroom exhaust pipe, and fell on my back.

"The staff has extra features!" Jessica hissed in my ear. "Push the buttons on the side and twist!"

I did what she suggested, and the staff came apart, leaving me clutching a glowing samurai sword, with a spike inside the handle.

Grinning, I leapt to my feet, flying at the reptile with speedy flashes of steel.

Of course, we were both animated, so I couldn't just chop her head off. She blocked my attacks with her trident like a black belt in ninjitsu.

Another long, drawn out kung fu and bird battle. It was like that fight sequence on the double staircase in the second _Matrix_ movie. The one where you hit fast forward because nobody really accomplished anything productive for more than five minutes and you got tired of the repetitive music.

Flo was a complete doodle. I from time to time turned noid, which meant I also got tired.

Something happened, and she succeeded in knocking my sword out of my hands.

I watched with horror as it flew off the roof.

I rushed to the side, willing a bird to grab the sword, but Flo swung at me several times, and I had to run away.

Now I was recreating a different type of cartoon. The one where Bugs Bunny runs through a castle while a maniac tries to chop his head off.

All I was doing was dodging and running a lot. I guess I could have used the spike to will weapons into existence, but I didn't know how to do it. Whenever I tried, I ended up making flower bouquets and bird seed and other useless gags.

Flo hit me in the head, then knocked me flat on my back.

She would have speared me through the skull too, had I not been wearing the ring. A dome of feathers shielded me from attack.

"Drew _San_," I heard a gruff sounding little brown bird chirping at me. "Ask yourself! What is the meaning of _ka-ra-te_?"

"I don't know," I said. "Kicking butt?"

"No, Drew San. It means `open hand.'"

"Open hand..." I muttered. "That's stupid."

But then I thought about it a moment. "_Open hand!_ Of course!"

I focused all my thoughts on being powerful, bursting from the feathered ball in a brilliant explosion of light.

The shockwave from the blast threw Flo onto the shingles, but she got up quickly, rushing at me with her trident.

Instead of charging, I stepped back into a horse stance, raising my open palms.

When the spear came to run me through, I struck with a hard rotary parry.

Her weapon shot out of her grasp with a crack, whipping over the side of the building.

When she dove after it, I jumped up on the ledge, knocking her the opposite direction with a wheel kick.

My birds came to my aid, pelting her with their little bodies..._and her birds too_, since she didn't have the trident anymore.

Still, we fought, hand to hand.

We only battled like this for a few moments before I saw her bringing out a glowing pentagram on a chain.

"_Demons of the Shadow Realm!_" she called. "_Come to mine aid!"_

Storm clouds darkened the sky above us, great boiling clouds like the mansion scene in _Fright Night_.

Thunder rumbled, and a huge lightning bolt came down from the sky, electrifying the pendant.

One of these days, someone is going to have to explain to me why demonic power in all these cartoons and movies comes the sky.

The roof cracked open, as if an earthquake had hit it, which also didn't make sense, because a hypothetical demon would still have to take an elevator to climb _through_ the crack.

I guessed there was a secondary crack in the basement or something, unless this was a crack in the fabric of space/time or the building had become the Shadow Realm. I suppose the glowing light inside the crack _did_ hint at one of these possibilities.

A thousand monsters of various shapes and sizes crawled out, growling and cracking their knuckles as they leaped at me.

"Give up, Drew," Flo said. "You're outnumbered and outgunned."

"I still have a spike," I said.

"So do I! And I'll have yours, the other two, and the one on top of that sign in no time!"

"There's only one of you," I said. "And I'm going to _make sure_ you go down before I do!"

"Kindred!" she barked to her army.

The demons growled and turned towards me. A pair of giants were already moving.

In seconds, they would `castle' Flo, and I'd have no chance of destroying her.

I clenched my fists, steeling myself for my offensive.

Ka-boom!

A tremendous explosion rocked the entire building, flooding the sky behind us with dazzling light.

"My trident!" Flo screamed. "No!"

All around me, I began to see flickerings. People and other beings were being released from the spell.

The lucky ones hit the roof, or hurriedly flapped to a landing, or flitted around close to the ground below.

The others I could hear screaming all the way down, car windows shattering from the impact of their bodies on the metal rooftops, horns blaring, alarms going off.

And then I found myself in the possession of a small army.

Vikings.

Post apocalyptic gunwomen.

Dad, Amanda's mom, and the head of Cool World PD.

Jessica, Misty, Whiskers...

Not to mention the freaking Ninja Turtles, _and_ Mr. "I have always liked cowabunga."

"Funny," I said. "I don't _feel_ outnumbered."

Amanda locked and loaded a rifle.

"Or outgunned."

Although Flo had numbers, it was hardly a fair fight. I had roughly twenty two allies with me, more or less, plus some animated birds that were not Flo's creation. That meant we only had to slaughter about forty five generic looking demons and we'd save the world.

Actually, less than that, with some turtle teamwork, and the spikes.

The turtles clotheslined demons, grabbed one of their teammates and spun him around with weapon extended, knocking the monsters off the roof, then picked up a smaller demon and used him like a bowling ball against a group of larger ones.

Splinter, of course, was _amazing_.

Extra pecked the thugs off the roof, Amanda shot the enemy, Sneezer clubbed them, the Vikings went berserk, and Dane had her ax.

Jessica, apparently, had found the glowing samurai sword, and was slicing through dozens of demons like paper.

I treated my demons to a little kung fu action.

I must have turned back into a female rat, because Splinter was staring at me.

Someone hit him in the head, and he didn't even notice.

Forcing myself to ignore him, I kicked my way to Flo.

"What's the reason for the sex change?" she asked as I came near.

"You scared me away from the opposite sex," I said, and then I started hitting her.

Crack. A demon staggered backwards as a police officer shot him.

When I glanced that way, I saw a squadron of them. Nevada's finest.

I suppose all the transforming and dead bodies and demons alerted them of the need to do something.

I heard someone shout as a cop shot him. Not a demon, but animated. The cops couldn't tell the difference, apparently.

Flo capitalized on my distraction, striking me in the face.

I kicked and punched her backwards, towards the sign, with all its sparking scaffolds.

I swept her feet out from under her, and when she fell, dad popped up behind her, yanking the spike out of her outfit by extending his arms like a cartoon character.

When she turned around to attack him, I stepped in front of him and gave Flo something from both fists.

The demons tried to stop me, barging in the way, attacking from the side, but, well, Splinter had my back, and Sneezer filled in when sensei was occupied.

I didn't want to admit it to myself, but I liked having two men trying to impress me. It was being a damn female doodle for so long. That's what got to me, I guess, but I couldn't exactly help it. I did my best work as a kimono wearing kung fu rat.

The gun shots abruptly stopped, either because the demons killed all the cops, or the cops ran away. I hoped for the latter.

I kicked Flo back, and as I did, a flock of doodle birds swarmed around her with animated rope.

It was the glowing kind like Wonder Woman used, so she couldn't easily snap it...or lie, if it were literally Wonder Woman's lasso.

I marched up to her, arms crossed behind my back, with my chest puffed out.

"So."

I was about to tell her to stand down, and send her demons away, but I didn't get to.

I see Jessica push her way past Master Splinter, and in one quick movement, she slices Flo's head off her body with her glowing sword.

"Nothing personal, Flo," she said. "You just really pissed me off."

One by one, the demons started exploding into black ash, the crack in the roof slowly closing up.

"There!" Jessica said in a satisfied tone, sheathing her sword in the back of her bikini. "Now we can all go home!"

I sighed in relief as I watched more demons scream and explode. "Yeah. Let's go home."

Of course, _that_ was a problem, in and of itself.

I'd just drank the `blue Kool-Aid', ruining the effect of the cure we had been working so hard to achieve.

Also, my apartment door was damaged, its interior looted, and my car was sitting on four rims in Dane's driveway.

Extra fluttered up to me with a spike in his beak, the spike that had been inside Flo's trident.

"Thanks," I muttered.

Whiskers took it from me. "We first need to put these spikes back in their rightful places."

"I'd hardly call some of those places `rightful,'" Jessica replied. "Reanimated Disney? Adolf Hitler's death weapon?" She shook her head.

"I know some abandoned fallout shelters and other strategic locations we can use to permanently dispose of the spikes," Whiskers said. "Give them to me. I'll take care of them."

"Good idea," Jessica said. "I'll help."

We looked at her funny for a moment. After all, her blundering with the spikes had nearly caused the end of the world.

"I'm a changed bird, I mean, _girl_. Changed girl. Flo has convinced me, this is too much power for anyone to have. The sooner we have these things buried under concrete, the better."

Chad had come out of hiding, bouncing his baby. "But Jessica!" he said. "What about Misty's weapon? What about Master Blaster?"

She shook her head. "Honey, this debacle has made me see the error of my ways."

"It hasn't made me see mine!" Misty cried behind me.

She was still an alien bird, wearing the crown.

"Misty!" Jessica hissed. "No! We're changed now!"

And she nodded towards the spike in my dad's hands. "_Really changed._"

Misty frowned. "Oh."

And after a pause, "I suppose _we've all_ changed."

"Tell you what," Jessica said to Whiskers. "How about I _accompany you_, you know, help you bury the spikes?"

Whiskers shrugged. "That sounds fine, _I suppose._"

"She _did_ help me stop Holli last time," Dad admitted.

And so he hands her the spike.

"_Dad,_" I said. "I don't think that's such a good idea."

"It'll be fine," Whiskers said to me. "I'll be watching her the whole time." He pointed to my belt. "We should bury yours as well."

Swallowing, I handed it to him. "Be careful. Watch her like a hawk."

Whiskers laughed. "Please. No bird metaphors. But I'll be careful."

He reached into his coat, pulling out a little device that looked like a toaster with a Sega Saturn controller stuck into it, plugging the spike through the center.

A shimmering portal opened in the air.

"Home awaits, my doodle friends! But you must hurry! We have pressing business to attend to!"

Dad patted me on the back. "You did a great job, son.._.daughter_. I'm proud of you."

He stepped through the portal.

Holli gave me a nod. "You're a good man, just like your father. I'll continue working on the formula to cure you."

I smiled. "Thanks, Holli."

Harris shook my hand. "I gotta hand it to you, Deebes. I thought you were an asshole, but you proved me wrong. I guess, when you really think about it, some of the best men _in the bible_ committed incest, and they turned out to be just as...good."

"Thanks," I groaned. "I guess, coming from you, that, uh, means a lot."

He clicked his teeth at me and went into Cool World.

The spider also shook my hand.

"So you say my boyfriend is in there somewhere?" Dane asked.

"Yeah," I said. "Go find Master Blaster."

I didn't have to tell her twice.

"We'll go get the car," Riffraff said. "Be with you in a minute."

I furrowed my brow. "How are you going to get it up here?"

He shrugged. "We'll figure something out."

Sneezer was wrapping Cupcake up in a blanket. I'd have to do something with her eventually, I figured.

Cleo smiled at me. "You're a better guy than I took you for..._but I like you better as a girl_. Maybe if you stay that way we can _have a little fun_ sometime?"

"Um..." I stammered.

She laughed. "Think about it."

She and Riffraff marched past the portal, into the hotel.

Jessica marched up to Chad.

"You should go home too, honey. It's been a long day. You need rest...and our babies need you."

"What about you?" he said.

"I'll be along in a little while," she said. "We'll have these spikes taken care of in no time."

Chad nodded. "See you back at the suite, passionflower!"

He and his baby vanished.

Everyone else stayed.

"Very well," Whiskers said, making an adjustment to the device. "If anyone else wants to leave now, say so before I shut it off."

"Splinter?" Leonardo asked his sensei.

Reluctant to share his feelings, apparently, the rat simply said, "I..._am staying._"

The turtles agreed to stay with him.

Whiskers reached for the shutoff switch. "Then let us make haste to bury these blasted things."

"Wait," Jessica blurted. "I need to get something real quick!"

Whiskers nodded. "All right, but make it snappy. The longer we stay here with such immense power in our hands, the more chances there are for the power to be stolen and misused!"

The moment he had said the part about immense power, Jessica was already rushing up the scaffolding.

I watched with horror as she climbed up on the hotel sign, yanking the spike out of the letter I.

Black ooze erupted from its interior like a geyser.

With spike in hand, Jessica sped down the scaffolding, grabbed Misty by the arm, then ripped the fifth spike out of the professor's device with a mischievous "Yoink!"

The two leapt through the portal just seconds before a colossal tidal wave of black ooze blanketed the roof in a massive flood.


	84. Chapter 84: Myrrh and Miasma

The moment I saw that black tidal wave, I knew I was screwed.

My first impulse was to run into the hotel, though, of course, it wouldn't have protected me any. I could see it now, the elevator going down floor by floor, doors opening to flood each hallway in a way similar to that blood river scene from _the Shining_...and _The Simpsons_.

My second impulse was to wonder where Cupcake's body went to.

None of us on the rooftop had a chance to do much of anything. The wave blasted us over the sides of the building, rushing down its walls like a waterfall, a cataract of sludge. I could have sworn I saw a spiky blue hedgehog being swept away with it, his mouth calling for help in slow motion, but I could have imagined it. There _were_ a lot of weird animated shapes emerging from that gunk.

I was human, which made it that much harder to stop my fall.

As I flipped head over feet, catching alternating flashes of the darkened sky and the Las Vegas Club, I adjusted my signet ring, focusing on bird thoughts.

I turned into Bird King, but I maintained that mouse brown feathered body only a few seconds before squawking and dropping several stories.

I saw hotel rooms and the Golden Gate casino as I flipped.

I willed my bird subjects to come forth and save me, and my friends if they were able to, but nothing happened. We kept falling.

My whole life flashed before my eyes.

Briefly, I pondered the inconsistency of my memories, namely how I could remember being a toddler and turning animated, yet remember seeing my dad eating hot dogs and pooh poohing my drawings, when I shouldn't have seen him at all after the Vegas incident. He was _out of prison_, and _gone_, wasn't he?

That's when I remembered: I wasn't in the real world when I showed dad my drawings. He had taken me to meet my sister in Cool World, hanging out in that painting he called a house.

A trick of my brain, like how I had a false memory of my mother and dad coming to my high school graduation when it was really grandma and a school teacher. Because mom and dad didn't come.

Or how we had a Bring Your Family to Work day at my job, and I only _thought_ mom stopped by to see me at my job. It was actually someone else's mother.

Was this a sign of getting old, or did my brain just wallpaper over really depressing things to make me feel better?

Oh well, I was going to die anyway.

Harris told me he was once a human, and a doodle pushed him off this very building, turning him into a doodle through death. Would being pushed off the roof by a wall of animated sludge work the same way?

When I looked below, I could see the victims of Flo's insanity. The people that weren't screaming and running from the flood of `crude' were either doodle-fied or dead. I saw one corpse flat on the smashed roof of a BMW, legs sticking through the broken windshield.

Yet, oddly enough, I could see cartoon characters of ordinary people groaning and getting up from the sidewalks next to them, like they were recovering from a fall from a shorter height.

There didn't seem to be a rhyme or reason for which ones got to live. This did not comfort me any.

I screamed as the ground came rushing up at me.

The sludge beat me to the ground. The wave appeared to only be a couple feet deep, but when I fell into it, it was like six or twelve. I guess it shouldn't have surprised me, as Daffy Duck could jump off a mile high diving board into a glass of water without serious injury.

When I splashed down, I saw a dormouse and a dodo and a mock turtle paddling past the submerged limousine in the circle driveway where the valets ordinarily worked.

The liquid washed me down the driveway, and I was out on the Fremont Street Experience, fighting against the current as I drifted beneath that weird vaulted ceiling.

I grabbed a lamp post, climbing up on a police car.

"Drew!" I heard my sister shouting. "Up here!"

I saw her, Sneezer and the Turtles standing on the awning above the Golden Gate, next to that big sign shaped like an exclamation point.

"How did you get up there?" I asked.

"Take the Meat Stairs!"

I looked around and found a spongy red staircase with a stupid looking one toothed face on the bottom rung, which floated like a buoy on the black liquid. Meatwad from _Aqua Teen Hungerforce_, apparently.

"Yeah," I said. "Great."

When I reached the top, and crossed that awning, I suddenly realized that my sister looked different.

She was completely animated, like she did when we first met, at the Halftone Club. That sexy bunny costume looked so much better as ink and paint.

"Amanda," I said. "You're _animated._"

"You're _staring_," said she.

I had been Cartoon Drew at the time, and yes, I was staring.

"Sorry," I stammered. "I..."

"You like me better as a doodle, don't you?"

"I...well..._you looked nice as a noid, too._"

"But you like this version of me better."

I couldn't exactly deny it. "_Well..._"

"What do you like about this that you didn't like about my other form?"

I fumbled for the words.

"Is my noid form just not sexy enough? What?"

"Honestly?" I said.

"Yes. Honestly."

I swallowed. "I don't feel as guilty about sleeping with my sister when she's animated."

Amanda frowned. "But if we do it now, I'll be just like I was. Half doodle, always changing all the time. A _freak._"

She sighed. "I work so hard to turn human, and look what happens to me!"

Then she started crying.

Feeling sorry, I put my arm around her, and she turned and kissed me on the mouth.

Immediately, I turned into kimono rat, pulling away.

"Great," she groaned. "I'm not only one hundred percent doodle, but I also made the only man who ever slept with me switch teams."

She yanked me in close, kissing me again. When I didn't transform again, she blurted, "Nothing?"

"You're really pretty," I blurted in a high pitched squeal.

"Not as pretty as you," Splinter purred, kissing my hand, I mean, _paw_.

:Little hearts popped out of my kimono.

"Sensei," said the sword bearing turtle with the blue headband. "I'm happy that you've finally found someone you like, but she was _male_ just a few seconds ago."

"I do not judge," Splinter said. "She is beautiful, and her kung fu skills are equal to my own."

I found myself blushing.

Leonardo rolled his eyes. "_Okay..._" And he walked away, muttering to the other turtles.

"I thought it was bad enough when Holli ruined things," Whiskers muttered as he stared at the carnage.

I looked around for Sneezer, and found him leaning over the awning, peering down at something.

Puzzled, I stared down with him...after admiring his hindquarters for a moment.

Below, I could see a group of dancer girls in black bikinis floating on a table from some restaurant.

The girls were animated, and all looked like mice, but when Sneezer wrapped his tail around a letter on the light up sign and said hi, they all screamed and dove in the ooze to swim away.

Despite being rodents, they were scared. I guess they hadn't looked in a mirror.

Well, except for one, who waved and said, "Hi, cutie!" until the other girls grabbed her and dragged her off.

Following this, the alligator from the sewer swam past. I pretended not to see her, creeping back from the edge.

"Master, what's that?" I heard Extra saying from my shoulder.

I looked up to where his wing was pointing, and saw a giant jukebox floating across the sky.

"It's more wackiness," I said. "Nothing surprises me at this point."

The bird whistled the theme song to _Saint Elsewhere_.

I frowned at him. "What now?"

"Nothing, master. I'm just nervous."

"I think we're _all_ nervous, Extra."

He smiled at me. "You are such a good and wise king. _And queen_. I would be sorry if you ever left."

I gave him a smile, rubbing his head.

"Is something going on out here?" came a sleepy voice from my kimono top. I looked down and saw Mack Daddy wiggling out of the folds.

"Uh, just the end of the world," I said.

"Oh." And then he crawled back into my clothes.

"Hey!" I cried, but he had gone back into Hammerspace or something, I guess.

"What do we do?" Amanda asked me.

"I don't know. Practice our swimming techniques?"

I frowned as I stared down the road, thinking about my apartment. My job. My bank account. For once, it didn't turn me real. I just changed into Cartoon Drew.

"What would you do if this all went back to normal?" she asked.

I didn't have an immediate reply to that. My apartment didn't have much of anything left in it but clothes, someone was probably draining my bank account down to the last penny, which wouldn't be terribly hard to do after the clocks and the rent check.

Come to think of it, even if they revoked the provisional credit, those fraudulent checks would still get me evicted.

So all I had left was my job, and my ID badge was in a car sitting on four flats, which I couldn't get to move again if the world were suddenly de-animated.

"I've still got a largely unblemished attendance record at work," I said. "I could probably stay with mom until I got all this stuff sorted out."

"That's a little extreme, don't you think?"

I shrugged. "Someone went to a lot of extremes to ruin my life."

"I'm sorry," Amanda said. "That wasn't my intention."

"No, no, not you," I said. "Never you. _Someone else._"

Though as the words came out my mouth, I wondered.

I told her about the apartment and everything.

"Oh. Well, _if you ever need a place to stay_, you can always stay with _me._"

"Thanks," I muttered.

I glanced at Splinter. "Where's the Power Wagon?"

Sensei shook his head. "Someone pushed it over while we were birds."

"What about April?"

"My sons were just discussing this."

_Sons_, I thought. If me and Splinter got together, I'd be...Leonardo's mom?

I had a visual of tucking him in at night.

I tried not to think about it again.

...And really hoped it didn't appear in a thought bubble above my head.

"They are planning to make a raft," Splinter said. "Although I do not wish to break the law by breaking windows and stealing furniture, it may be the only way to get materials for this...raft."

I heard a low puttering sound, then a honk.

When I leaned over the awning, I saw the Cat-Illac approaching..._in boat mode_. It docked at the Meat Stairs.

Riffraff stood on the hood, waving to us. "Anybody need a ride?" he called through a horn he'd removed from his Viking helmet.

Immediately one of the dancing girls climbed up on the trunk.

"Not you!" he cried.

She smiled and waved, so he let it pass...

...Until a green bear in a blackjack dealer's outfit climbed aboard with her.

"Okay, _her_, but definitely not _you_."

"He's my boyfriend," the dancer said.

The cat rubbed his face in frustration. "Fine."

He waved to us frantically, the nonverbal message being, "Hurry before we take on more unwanted guests."

I rushed down the Meat Stairs, the rest of my team following close behind, quickly jumping aboard the car.

Once we were all inside the vehicle, Meatwad resumed his normal spherical shape, staining the upholstery orange as he climbed in the back seat.

"Oh gee thanks, meatball!" Riffraff complained. "As if the car isn't dirty enough!"

"My name is Meatwad, man!" the creature said. "Meatwad!" Then he looked depressed, muttering, "_I wish Boxy Brown were here. _He'd_ show you who's boss..."_

He busied himself playing some handheld video game about dressing up dolls.

"Where to?" Cleo called from behind the wheel.

"Did you see a green wagon around here?" I asked. "One with a shell on the roof?"

The Viking bride gazed back at the Plaza Hotel. "_Maybe..._"

She turned the vehicle around, aiming toward the waterfall of inky liquid.

"Would you mind swinging by my apartment?" the bear asked. "Becky's mother is coming over tonight, and I want to get the place cleaned up."

"This isn't a taxi," Cleo said.

When she noticed Riffraff staring at the dancer, she slapped him.

"What."

Instead of replying, his wife's eyes bugged out, her jaw literally dropping to the floor.

"Honey, is something wrong?" Riffraff asked.

When he looked ahead, his jaw dropped too.

I also looked that way, in the direction of the Union Plaza.

Not good.

We were no longer looking at a simple waterfall of black sludge. It was now a _creature_, a fifty foot human shaped blob, with long bulging arms and feet like willow tree roots.

As we stared at it, the level of ooze around the vehicle decreased, the liquid flowing into those enormous legs.

"Drew," Amanda hissed, pointing to the creature's right arm.

I looked up and saw a tiny green cube clutched in its fist.

"Guys," I said. "I think I've spotted your Power Wagon."

Extra flew up in the air, indicating a yellow suited figure danging from the vehicle's back end.

"._..And April._"

"We're screwed," said Michelangelo.

I nodded. "That's putting it mildly."

'Wait, guys," Donatello said. "In the past we've fought lots of giant things. Shredder made giant robots, and enlarged animals and people to the size of Godzilla, I mean, _Gorgonzola_, so they could destroy New York. The question is, what is this creature's weakness?"

"A lit match?" Raphael suggested.

"No," Whiskers said. "If it were that simple, I would have taken care of the problem years ago, when Holli removed the spike the first time. This isn't oil."

"Dude," Michelangelo muttered. "I think what this thing needs is a giant assed _sponge_, maybe some Dawn soap."

"That's great," I said. "Except you're not going to _find_ a giant sponge on the Vegas Strip."

"You sure? I think I saw a giant casino chip down there..."

I shook my head.

"Which reminds me. Are any of the casinos still open?"

"Can you please explain to me how you turtles get money to begin with? That part never made sense to me."

"E-trade," said Raphael.

"That is not an answer."

"I've got it," Donatello said. "We'll go back through Ewes Bank, grab a giant sponge from Cool World, and come back out here to face it down."

"Sounds like a plan," I said.

"Can we _please_ stop by my apartment?" Becky asked. "I need to take the puppy out!"

We ignored her.

"What about April?" Leonardo cried. "We can't just leave her up there!"

"She's _animated_," I said. "She'll live. And even if she wasn't, she's got a river of slime to break her fall."

Leonardo paid no attention to me, maybe because I broke the fourth wall or something. "We've _got_ to rescue her!"

And then Cleo started motoring towards the creature, until it loomed directly above us.

While this was happening, Sneezer was introducing himself to Becky. She giggled, seeming to enjoy the attention, but Mr. Green Bear was not amused, especially when `Cave Mouse' put his paw on the girl's thigh.

My pal ended up getting punched in the face so hard that he flew overboard. He kept his paws to himself after that.

"All right, turtles," Leonardo said as he stood on the car hood. "Here's the plan. We use our weapons to scale this thing, we grab April, and we book the shell out of here."

"That plan sucks," I said.

"You got a better one?" he challenged.

"Yeah. We just went over it," I said. "She's animated, ergo she can't get hurt."

Leonardo responded by shouting, "Turtle power!" and jumping at the creature with both swords, climbing up its leg.

The other turtles cheered and followed him.

"This _is..._a bad idea," Splinter muttered.

The blob kicked our car, and a huge black wave threw us into the Golden Gate casino.

The car dumped us, went sideways, and for a few minutes, we struggled to keep afloat, but then Cleo pushed something on the bottom of the car, and it righted itself, pumping the ooze out of a series of drains in the floor. We all climbed back in.

The interior of the building was a maze of restaurants, half submerged one armed bandits, blackjack tables and Romanesque decor. The sludge had interfered with the electrical appliances, so it was dark.

Down the hallway, I could see the bikini mice paddling their table, muttering about how they'd get paid during all this. Becky waved and shouted to them, and the girls chatted and laughed about the whole thing.

Sneezer drooled and stared at the mice. He would have fallen out had Amanda not grabbed his tail and pulled him back.

Crowds of cartoon ducks and amphibians with touristy clothes swam by.

All of a sudden, I heard a curious sounding whistle.

"Hey! Kupo!"

I turned to face the source of the noise, and saw a fat white ball of fur flying towards us.

The creature had cat ears and tiny bat wings and a stupid looking blob of red fuzz dangling above its head on a stalk like some kind of anglerfish.

I could discern its features quite well because it clutched a glowing piece of sculpture in its tiny little feet.

The object was sort of like a goblet, except its bottom slanted off, making it a mystery how it held a swirling ball of clear liquid in its center.

"Kupo!" it shouted. "You're going to need this!"

Seeing that it was addressing me, I frowned at the creature. "My name isn't kupo. It's _Drew._"

"Very well, _kupo_," it said. "But you're still going to need this."

I stared at the water. "What is it?"

"It's myrrh," the creature replied.

"Myrrh!" I said. "That's the stinky perfume they put on dead bodies! And plus, myrrh is supposed to be _brown_, not clear. I ask you again, what is this?"

"I do not understand the question, kupo. This is finest myrrh from the big weeping willow trees around our magical land."

"What the hell am I supposed to do with _that_?"

The creature shrugged. "I am tired of carrying this chalice, kupo. _You_ take it for awhile."

"No," I said. "Stick it up your butt."

"I don't think it would fit inside my butt, kupo."

"C'mon, you stupid floating blob! What am I supposed to do with this?"

"Destroy the _miasma_, kupo."

"You mean the sludge? This is just a ball of water."

"No it is not. Try it, kupo."

As an experiment, I stuck my index finger into it.

When it came back out, it was solidly human, while the rest of my body was animated. I had a finger of fleshy human skin.

"It's a cure!" I cried. "I could use this to make myself human forever!"

"Maybe, kupo," the puff ball said. "But you would not save the world!"

"Look at what it's doing, Drew!" the professor cried, pointing to the masses of ink blobs. "The mog is right! This may be the solution we need!"

I looked, and sure enough, the stuff was clearing, folding back, retreating.

So was my animated form, but I wasn't complaining.

"So what do you suggest?" I asked him.

"If we can get that myrrh close enough to that creature, we may be able to destroy it for good."

"All right," I said. "It seems straightforward enough. We only need to drop this into the sludge we're sitting in, and it's all gone."

"Actually, no, kupo," the mog said. "That will only destroy part of it. You need to destroy the _head._"

"Destroy the head," I repeated skeptically.

"Yes, kupo. There is a red eye. You must hit the eye with this chalice to destroy the miasma."

That's when I saw a black wall closing over the entrance, throwing everything into darkness.

"And you can't just smash it into that wall and kill it that way."

"No, kupo."

"Well, shit."

"Only if it helps you save the world, kupo."

The ooze was not exactly harmful. I'd gone swimming in it.

"So," I said. "Let's rev up and drive through that junk."

"I'm not sure you want to do that, Drew," Amanda said. "You saw what that thing did to the turtles' van. What if we boat right into its fist or something?"

In answer, I held the chalice above the liquid, and it shrank away, causing the Cat Boat to dip sideways, due to the displaced fluid.

"Oh. Maybe _that_ will work."

I climbed out on the hood, holding the object over my head as Cleo gunned the engine.

I felt incredibly silly until we reached the wall of ooze and a hole opened in its surface like someone dropping a dab of soap on a grease spot.

It actually was a fist. When we passed through it, another fist raised up and tried to smash us.

Riffraff threw his ax in the giant's direction, but when it flew close, a pair of hands popped out of the ooze, throwing the ax back with such force that it stuck in Cleo's headrest.

Becky squealed in terror, but the green bear clutched her to his waistcoat protectively.

Riffraff said something he would never say on Saturday morning TV.

Cleo sped up, swerving the car boat around to escape the creature.

I climbed onto the trunk, holding up the chalice to protect the vehicle.

"What am I supposed to do?" I called to the mog. "Throw this thing?"

"Only if your arms are really strong, kupo."

"My sons..." Splinter said.

I glanced around, but couldn't see the turtles anywhere.

"I'm sorry, sensei."

"_Yamato_, please," he said in a warm tone, because I was turning into Rat Girl again.

I blushed a little. "I'm sorry, Yamato. I don't think they made it."

"My sons are strong," Splinter said. "Other things have appeared to kill them before."

"_Yeah,_" I agreed.

I frowned at the chalice, then at the beast. "How am I supposed to get this..._up there_? I don't have a cannon or a slingshot or anything."

"We _do_ have _something.._." Amanda said.

I stared at her. "Like what?"

My sister folded down the rear seat, pulling a blue baseball bat out of the trunk. "I thought we might play again sometime, you know..._for old time's sake..._"

"So..." I said. "You think I can knock this thing out of the park."

"_Well,_" she said, turning a bit pink. "_Not really..._"

"You're hoping for spectacular failure, then."

"Well, if you _can_ save the world, it would be nice, _but if you can't._.." She slid a hand down her thigh.

"_I understand._" I sighed. "No pressure, then."

"I...would find it _infinitely sexier_ if you could, in fact, save the world," Splinter said.

I swallowed hard, not quite sure if that were an incentive, or a reason not to try.

And then I thought about it for a moment. "Wait. You're a _ninja_, with lots of heroic world saving under your belt. Why can't _you_ do this?"

Splinter shook his head. "I fear if I touch that liquid, I will be no more."

"In your animated form," Whiskers said, "You should be able to emulate doodle baseball players enough to send that chalice flying!"

I took a deep breath. "You're right. I _can_ do this."

"I'm _counting_ on you," Splinter said.

"I'll pretend I didn't hear that," I muttered.

The moment I lifted the chalice for a practice toss, I discovered a problem. My body became human the moment I tried to swing.

"It's no use!" I cried. "There's no way I can knock this thing up in the air that far!"

I handed Amanda the bat, but she refused to take it.

"This is your second chance, Drew. Your opportunity to show Riffraff up!"

"That's right!" the squat Viking agreed. "In fact, if you can knock that chalice right into that monster's face, I'll forget the whole slavery thing and let you live happily ever after with..._whoever you want_, in your little bird kingdom."

"Thanks," I said. "I actually like _your_ incentive the best."

He grinned, pretending to shine an invisible medal on his chest.

I looked down at my hands and groaned. "That still begs the question of _how_."

"Drew..."

Amanda reached in between her breasts, pulling out a thermos. Hammer space. "I think you're going to need to drink this."

I took the bottle, staring at it with apprehension. "It always seems to come down to this, doesn't it?"

"Drew, I know you want to regain your normal human form, but you're not a professional baseball player. I don't think you have a chance without this stuff."

"But that's just it! I don't have a chance _with_ the stuff! If I drink that stuff and turn fully doodle, I won't be able to touch the chalice, will I? I'll be just like you!"

"There's a chance your noid physiology will remain in your body, even after ingesting the concentrated doodle essence," Whiskers said. "And the added strength should be enough to launch the myrrh."

"How about I just get Meatwad to make himself into a tower and I go up there and drop the myrrh on the monster's head?"

"No way man!" said the red blob. "Leave me out of this!" And he squished himself into the trunk.

The towering blob loomed closer.

"Damn," I growled, unscrewing the cap to the thermos.

I didn't drink the whole bottle, but I _did_ drink roughly a cup, and I could hear the Popeye theme song playing from somewhere.

The flavor was rather bland, kind of burnt tasting, with something like dirt floating in it. I choked it down anyway.

We were speeding between Binions and the Golden Nugget now. The liquid was choppy due to the wind and the creature stirring up waves. I wasn't so much standing on the Cat-Illac as I was surfing on it.

And I was supposed to hit a...sculpture out of the ballpark from _there_.

Not really, she said.

All I could do was give this my best shot and hope for the best.

I raised the chalice and found my ink and paint hands rapidly disintegrating. I had to work fast.

I waited for the giant to come closer, then tossed the `cup' into the air, imagining myself as Casey At Bat as I gave it my most vigorous swing.

This was it.

The fate of the entire world depended on a one half second swing of a baseball bat.

Crack.

The bat connected with the chalice, sending it high in the air.

I was actually astonished. I'd never knocked a ball or anything as far as I hit that cup.

Okay, so I got some distance on it, but that would mean nothing if I missed and hit a `foul.'

I watched with breathless anxiety as the object arced skyward, rising above the giant's head.

Foul ball.

The object missed, flying off at an angle. In an instant, it would be shooting harmlessly over the thing's shoulder, smashing on the ground, and the world would never be normal again.

Did I say foul? I meant _fowl _ball.

You know those idiotic buzzards from all those Warner Brothers cartoons? The kind of retarded ones with the crossed eyes and the dinner bibs? One of them just so happened to get in the chalice's path.

Here's what I expected: The chalice breaks open, completely obliterating the mentally challenged buzzard guy, the giant gets a little sprinkle on the shoulder, he gets pissed off, and the world ends.

Instead, the chalice bounced off, flying back in my direction.

As if that wasn't enough of a suspension of the laws of physics, a second buzzard swooped down from a nearby hotel, bouncing the chalice back the other way, at an angle.

The chalice hit the monster square in the face, shattering in a burst of broken glass and glowing liquid. Why it didn't shatter on the buzzards, I don't know. I was still trying to figure out how my signet ring caused all that to happen.

What I saw next reminded me of that special effect they used on Freddy when he got buried in the third _Elm Street_ movie. A magical kind of glowing effect where you see a bunch of brilliant light while the bad guy's body disappears into thin air. Cleo stopped the Catboat, turning around to stare at it.

The light burned through the majority of the giant's torso in a matter of seconds, then rushed downwards like someone dropping a lit match into gasoline.

The wave of energy flowed backwards, rushing up the circle drive of the Union Plaza.

At the same time, a secondary wave rushed forward in our direction.

"Quick question," I said. "Anyone can answer. Tell me, what happens when that glowing light comes in contact with something that isn't a glob of black slime?"

In reply, Cleo started up our vehicle, stomping the pedal to the floor.

Our boat rushed down the Vegas Strip, swerving back and forth to avoid floating cars, or the reaching tendrils of glowing light.

The level of liquid became shallower and shallower the further we got from the stuff, to the point where we ran aground, and nearly got vaporized during the time consuming process of making the wheels pop back out.

We were near the school now. I could see the U.S. Bank building across the street.

Cleo gunned the engine, swerved toward the office building, and the Cat-Illac smashed through the revolving glass door, rocketing into the lobby, bowling over a crowd of corporate sheep in business casuals.

With her foot still pressing the pedal down all the way, Cleo drove us around the security desk, slowing to a stop only when we made it around the corner, right in front of Pete's training classroom. It appears our tires were puncture proof.

"Oh good Lord," Pete said as he stepped out of the room. "Do you have to park that _here_?"

"It's only for a few moments," I said. "Until we finish saving the world."

Pete laughed. "Good one! I like the sense of humor, Drew! But seriously. Could you get that thing out of here ASAP?"

"Sure," I groaned.

"_You should see the lobby_," Sneezer said with a naughty grin.

Pete rubbed his face in frustration. "I _really_ don't want to know."

And he returned to his room.

I climbed out of the vehicle, hurrying toward the lobby, to check if the glowing light had finished its work...or was still coming our way.

I looked around the corner and saw a brilliant flash. A second later, the lobby was empty of everything animated, with no evidence of there every having been something animated there.

I waited, but nothing else happened. It seemed the coast was clear.

I sighed in relief. "Looks like we've just saved the world!"

"Not quite," Whiskers said. "We still need to recover the five spikes."

Amanda squeezed my hand. "You didn't fail, but I'm not as disappointed as I thought I'd be. I'm not turned on, but I _am_ proud."

"Um, _thanks_," I said, a little embarrassed.

Riffraff pulled out an official looking scroll, ripping it up with his claws. "My friend, you are officially emancipated!"

"Thank you," I said. "I'm never gambling again."

Cleo muttered something to him, giving him an elbow.

"_About that.._." he said. "We, uh, knew you'd lose that bet from the beginning."

"Well that makes two of us," I muttered. "Which is why I'm glad I'm finally free from our agreement."

"Yeah..." the cat said. "_About that.._.There actually wasn't a wager or slavery contract at all. We just _said_ there was, to make your sister happy, and keep you in Cool World."

"What!" I cried.

"I felt sorry for Amanda," Cleo said. "So I did what I could to make sure you'd stay with her."

I glared at them in disgust, then scowled at my sister.

She started crying.

I sighed, shaking my head. "Come here..."

She did, and I hugged her.

She immediately kissed me on the mouth, and I transformed into rat girl.

Amanda pulled away quickly, and Splinter smiled at me.

"You did an excellent job," he said. And then he slaps me on the butt.

My emotions were so confused that I didn't respond, except to say, "We, uh, should find your sons."

The moment I said this, I saw a little red helicopter, similar to the type featured in _Mad Max_ movies, descending in front of the smashed in front entrance, bearing four green creatures and a female in a yellow jumpsuit. Sensei ran out to greet them.

I stared down at my hands, depressed at how I had abandoned my humanity.

I did a double take. My hands were human, not animated.

The rest of my body was animated rat. Some effect of the chalice?

Although happy to not lose my hands, it still depressed me.

I'm stuck like this forever! I thought.

The moment I dwelled on this, and thought about my job and apartment, I suddenly turned all the way human.

"The hell?" I cried. "I'm not complaining, but didn't I drink pure cartoon essence?"

Amanda blushed. "I didn't want to tell you, but I accidentally gave you the wrong thermos. You only drank a bunch of old coffee."


	85. Chapter 85: Matrices

I wasn't permanently a doodle! It was all placebo effect!

I was so overwhelmed with joy that I pressed my muzzle against my sister's lips and gave her a French kiss, stopping only when she started undressing me.

"Okay. Let's...not go there," I squeaked. "_I was just happy._"

"I was too," she said in low breathy tones. "Really really happy."

I swallowed, deciding to change the subject. "How come you're a solid doodle still, instead of totally human? I mean, look at me, I'm back to the way I was..."

"My mouth was open when that wave hit me," Amanda said. "I thought I would drown, I swallowed so much."

I frowned. "So...I really could have just scooped some of that stuff into my mouth, if I wanted to get doodle powers and stuff."

"Yeah. I'm not sure why I didn't think of it, but it's a good thing I didn't. Who knows if you would have been able to hit that chalice like that if you were a complete doodle?"

I nodded. "You're right."

I briefly wondered what would happen if we slept together again, but decided it would only make her a quarter doodle and me not human, so I tried not to think about it again.

I turned my attention to Whiskers. "There's something I don't understand. I would have missed that giant thing, if not for those buzzards bouncing it into his head like pinball bumpers. It seemed..._awfully convenient_. I just don't understand how or why it happened. Any ideas?"

"_One..._" the professor said, taking a device resembling an RC car controller out of his labcoat pocket. "Did you see the collars?"

I frowned. I _did_ see collars around those buzzards' necks. "So you have bird powers too?"

Whiskers laughed. "Not _exactly_. it's just an _invention_. You see, I baited those buzzards with the carcass of a _dead chipmunk, _fitted them with those collars, and have been trying to summon them with this device ever since Flo's spell was broken. My guess is they found their way into the noid world through this very bank."

"Wait," I said. "What happened to all those people who turned doodle after Flo killed them, you know, knocked them off the roof and everything?"

Whiskers just sighed and shook his head. "I'm sorry."

"Are you aware that this is private property?" a voice called from the double staircase.

I turned to face the source of the sound, and found myself looking at a purple haired doodle clad in a white furry one piece bikini with long fuzzy sleeves and a collar that reached all the way up to her chin. She had fuzzy dog ears above her actual ears, purple boots, purple gloves.

She must have noticing me ogling her, or the little hearts floating out of my body, for she glared through her round glasses at me.

"You are trespassing," she said. "Please vacate these premises at once, or I will be forced to call security."

I swallowed, fumbling for words. "I'm Drew Deebes. I...used to work here. I..."

The female adjusted something on her glasses several times, like they were binoculars or computers or something.

"Ah yes. The executive indiscretion. You will enter the Disciplinary Matrix immediately, and meet with Mr. Guillotte this evening. to go over the rest of the material you missed."

"Yes, ma'am," I squeaked without understanding the order.

"The rest of you must go at once. You do not have authorization."

"In case you haven't noticed," Amanda said. "The world almost ended out there."

"We came in here for safety," I stammered. "Sorry about the mess, by the way. This thing was about to wipe us all out of existence, so we were in a hurry to get in."

The stranger reddened, quickly marching down the stairs to survey the damage.

As she passed me, she caught me admiring the seam lines on her costume.

"Mr. Deebes, I understand you have been absent for the majority of your training class, but that is no excuse for your behavior. Please refer to page 105 in the Employee Handbook regarding our sexual harassment policy."

I looked away quickly. "Sorry."

When she saw the mess we made of the lobby, she slapped her left breast, and a pair of antennae and a microphone shot out of her neck like Brain's collar on _Inspector Gadget_.

"Sarah Botts to security!" she cried, the microphone amplifying her voice to a booming volume. "Drones assemble!"

In seconds, we were surrounded by large unfriendly looking _Battletech_ robots.

"The responsible parties will accompany me to the Legal Prosecution Matrix."

"So either way we're entering a matrix," I muttered.

"Only the responsible parties."

Sarah clapped her hands, and one of the `mechs' smashed the Cat-Illac flat, wadded it into a ball, and ate it with a robotic belch.

"My baby!" Riffraff cried.

Cleo wasn't happy either. "Hey! That was our ride!"

Sarah only shrugged indifferently.

A tick-like robot crawled down Sarah's shoulder, rapidly transforming into a cannon that wrapped around her forearm.

In one quick motion, she shot both Riffraff and Cleo with a glowing beam. They froze in mid movement, expressions of surprise locked on their faces as they floated a foot above the floor.

A second later, I saw Sarah point the weapon at me, and I was blinded by dazzling green light.

When my eyes focused, I found myself staring up at a ceiling made of twisted branches and shiny objects.

I was naked.

No.

Wait.

I was in..._diapers_.

Still, _mostly naked_.

I lay in a _nest_, that very same bed-like nest that the bird queen had tried to force me into sharing earlier.

Speaking of which...a blue, similarly clad cartoon figure held me in her arms, bare feathery breasts pressed against my unclothed skin. A yellow beak nuzzled against my neck.

My first thought was, Oh God. How did this happen?

"Cupcake?"

She smiled and nodded.

I pulled back with a start.

"Cupcake! You're alive!"

She batted her eyelashes at me, gazing lovingly into my eyes as she opened her mouth to speak.

"Unexcused absences," she said in Sarah's voice. "Absences are not permitted during introductory training periods, for any reason. Disciplinary action may include restriction of pay and penalties up to and including early termination, as determined by management."

I screamed.

The moment the sound escaped my lips, I found myself waking up in a desk in the Ewes Bank training room. Apparently I'd been sleeping.

I sat up with a start.

A group of Serta mattress sheep laughed at me.

And then I noticed a bearded face looming over me. "Having a nice sleep, _Woolma_?"

I looked around myself in confusion, prompting more laughter.

I looked down and saw I was covered in white wool, and I wore a bright yellow dress.

"Oh good Lord," I muttered, not really surprised at all.

Pete cleared his throat. "Ms. Lamb, can you please explain to the class what the acronym FDCPA stands for?"

"Fair Debt Collection Practices Act," I blurted. It was a good thing I used to work collections.

"ECOA."

"Equal Credit Opportunity Act." My voice came out sounding like a little girl, but again that was nothing earth shatteringly new.

"Explain it," he said.

And so I did.

"Describe an example of misrepresentation."

I could have been a smartass and said "You as a teacher," but I instead gave him a serious answer.

He asked me a few more things, like what a deceptive practice was, spousal laws, and how to verify and account. I was a little rusty, but even my fumbled answers seemed to be satisfactory enough.

Pete stared at me, seemingly at a loss for words. At last he laughed and said, "I've gotta hand it to you, Ms. Lamb. You've actually convinced me that you learn better with your head on your desk!"

I suddenly heard one person clapping. Everyone in the room froze like sculptures in a museum.

As the clapping continued, I saw Ms. Pantless Furry Jumpsuit materialize in front of my desk. Clap clap clap.

"I believe I have underestimated you, Deebes. You're an idiot savant. Why didn't you notify management that you weren't..._feeling challenged_?"

I shrugged. "The nail that sticks out the most gets hammered."

She frowned. "So you're an alcoholic."

"No, no," I said. "I meant if you stick out, you often get nailed."

Sarah rolled her eyes. "You needn't worry about _that_. You're really not my type."

I gave up on the metaphors. "Can you please release me from the Matrix now?"

"It's not The Matrix. It's called the Disciplinary Action Matrix."

"Okay, okay," I groaned. "It's like the Matrix but not as cool. _Got it._ Can I go please?"

She snapped her fingers and the classroom was gone.

I blinked, and I was in a courtroom, amidst an audience of felines and familiar doodles. On my left, I saw Amanda and Splinter, to the right, Sneezer, Mungo, and a flock of cartoon birds. Up front in the defendants' box, I could see Riffraff and Cleo, with Hector serving as attorney.

Hector looked strange in a suit, especially with a Viking helmet as an accessory, but nothing surprised me.

The prosecution consisted of a sheep, Ms. Botts and a little pink rabbit, with Harvey Birdman as lawyer.

Atop the judge's seat, I could see who would officiate this trial, a horned demonic bulldog from the _Dogface_ cartoon.

"I have a sneaky suspicion this isn't going to be a fair trial," I muttered to my sister.

"It could be worse," she whispered. "The prosecution could have been _Two Face._"

On cue, the deformed Batman villain stood up, trading places with Harvey.

Two Face had on his trademark two color tux, black and business-like on one side, all party on the other, the mutant side of his face leering at us as the other gave a bemused smirk. He idly flipped a quarter.

"Oops," Amanda said with an embarrassed blush. "I shouldn't have said that out loud."

It seemed the Legal Action Matrix "had us".

The judge banged his gavel, ordering the court to silence.

"The defendant stands accused of causing property damages to the Ewes Bank company in excess of two hundred thousand dollars, as well as the erasure of several valued employees. How does the defendant plead?"

"Not guilty, your honor," Riffraff said. "That property damage was done out of self preservation."

Judge Bulldog growled in annoyance. "How can you possibly claim innocence when you just admitted to causing the property damage?"

"Your honor, if I may..." Hector said.

"The defense attorney may speak," the judge sighed.

"Before I begin deliberations..." Hector said, marching before a jury box filled with kangaroos. "I'd like to do an impression of Donald Trump."

Removing, his Viking helmet, combed his hair down over his eyes, puffed out his cheeks, and waved his fists around angrily, grumbling about immigration.

Sarah jumped to her feet, glaring at him. "Objection, your honor! _Irrelevant!_"

"_Oh I don't know,_" the judge said with a smirk. "The humor seems relevant enough to me. Heh heh heh."

"Your honor," Hector said. "The forces of nature conspired against my clients. A _massive stream of energy_ was about to erase my friends from existence, and their _only hope of survival_ rested in them driving through the front of your building."

I stared at the cat in shock, deciding he must have gone to law school during his time in the Shadow Realm.

"Your honor," Two Face shouted. "Even if you believe this _fiction_ about an energy wave, the building featured a revolving door, which had been _unlocked_ at the time."

"And how was he supposed to _get his car through that_?" Hector asked.

"Cars don't belong in our lobby!" Sarah shouted.

The judge banged his gavel in irritation. "Order."

"Your honor," Two Face said, smugly flipping his coin. "My client wants the jury to understand that the defendant could have simply _parked his vehicle_, _gotten out_, and hurried through the front entrance with a minimum of damage to himself or the building."

"And let my car get destroyed?" Riffraff blurted.

The judge scowled. "Please explain to the jury what you mean."

Hector turned toward the judge. "What my client is saying, is that the wave of dangerous energy could have not only destroyed him and is passengers, but it also could have destroyed his Cat-Illac, for it is also an animated object, one worth several thousand dollars, I might add."

"Inform the court of the nature of this so-called `energy wave.'"

"Yes sir. For this I call witness Drew Deebes to the stand."

Rolling my eyes, I got up and marched to the witness box.

The dinosaur from all those public service announcements about oral hygiene held out a bible, asking me, "Do you swear to tell the tooth, the whole tooth, nothing but the tooth?"

I gave him my best `you're an idiot' face. "You mean `the truth'?" I prompted.

The dinosaur frowned. "This isn't...Gleem Toothpaste v. Cavities, is it."

"Wrong room?" I suggested.

The dinosaur turned a bright red, hurrying out of the room.

Deciding I'd been `sworn in' enough, I seated myself in the box.

Hector leaned over the box. "Please tell the jury, in your own words, what happened before the front end of the building..._collapsed._"

I started describing the events as they happened, from the time Jessica pulled the spike out of the hotel roof.

"No no no!" Hector groaned. "You're boring the jury! _Show_ them what happened in the form of a _flashback_!"

"I'm part noid," I said. "I can't do that."

Looking frustrated, Hector rushed to the defendant box, pulling a helmet larger than his briefcase, out of his briefcase. It looked like a colander with light bulbs stuck into it. This he placed on my head.

"Now. _Remember_ the events as they happened."

And so I did. Kind of. It appeared in the air above my head, in a large cloud, as I thought about it.

Being my memory, it wasn't a continuous narrative. I skipped over parts that seemed trivial, and then lost track of what I was doing and started fantasizing about sleeping with Cupcake, or remembering my first time with Amanda, or getting under Sneezer's loincloth.

"Mr. Deebes, could you please focus on the _case?_" Hector scolded as I imagined myself removing Splinter's robe.

I blushed. "Sorry." But as I said this, I found myself fantasizing about running my hands down the sides of Ms. Bott's costume before getting back on track, much to her outrage.

The jury saw enough. They saw the oozing creature, the myrrh wiping out everything. I was dismissed.

"Based on the evidence we have witnessed," the judge said. "It seems unreasonable to prosecute the defendant for the erasure of employees."

"Your honor, I disagree," Sarah said. "If the front of the building had remained intact, the employees would have remained protected by the shielding."

"It didn't work so well against the car!" Hector challenged.

"Objection!" Two Face growled.

"Sustained," the judge said. "It is a valid point."

He banged his gavel. "Dismissing erasure charges in favor of two hundred thousand dollar property damage claim. Proceed with the case."

"Your honor!" Two face protested. "If that noid hadn't attacked the creature with that..._myrrh,_ those employees would still exist!"

"This trial is Ewes Bank v. Cleo and Riffraff, not Ewes Bank v. Drew Deebes," the judge said. "Erasure charges dropped." And he hammered the gavel down.

"Great!" I commented to my sister. "They only need to admit their guilt and offer to reimburse the bank! No big deal!"

"But they're _not guilty_," Amanda hissed.

I rolled my eyes. "If _I_ broke into a house to escape a serial killer, I'd still have to pay for the damages to the house. That's just how the world works."

Two Face shook his head, looking angry. "Prosecution would like to bring _Master Splinter_ to the stand."

I scrunched up my face in bafflement.

When the ninja rat was in the witness box, Two Face asked, "You were present in that flashback we just viewed, were you not?"

Master Splinter nodded. "Hai."

"Did you see anything..._unusual_? Possibly inaccurate?"

"I admit I am confused about _one thing_," Splinter said.

"Please enlighten the jury."

The rat shrugged. "I cannot tell if Drew prefers to have me or that loincloth wearing simpleton as boyfriend."

Two Face grimaced in disgust. "No more questions for the witness."

Next he called Becky to the stand.

"What did you think of that flashback?" he asked. "I remind you, you're under oath."

"It was weird, but it actually explains a lot," she said. "Also, I think Drew and Caveman Mouse would make a cute couple."

"Your honor," Hector said. "The prosecution is clearing digging too hard for inconsistencies in the witness's flashback, when the only thing wrong I see is thinking he has a chance with the Ice Queen in the prosecution box...And hat diaper thing."

"Agreed," said the judge. "Anything else from the prosecution?"

Two Face gritted his teeth.

His next witness was the horse from Ren and Stimpy, but "No sir, I didn't like it," is not a very compelling testimony in any court.

"I'd like to call Michelangelo to the stand," Hector said.

The turtle got sworn in by Bart Simpson, who asked him to "cross his heart and hope to die, stick a needle in his eye" and so on. The turtle then climbed into the witness box.

Hector pointed at the prosecuting attorney. "What do you think of that suit?"

"I think the dude does most of his work standing in doorways."

Two Face rapidly became Red Face. His mouth was already in a perfect shape for snarling, with that deformed monster lip, so now it became twice as pronounced. "Objection!"

"Sustained," the judge said. "I've been wondering about that myself."

"Another thing," said the turtle. "Does the dude use different kinds of shampoo for both sides of his head? Maybe dry scalp on the left, and oily on the right?"

"If he were a Frosted Mini Wheat, which side would be the whole grain?"

"I'd probably say the plain human side, but I can't stand Mini Wheats."

"Oh dear!" Whiskers shouted as he stared at a small device. "Oh this won't do at all!"

A dead silence fell over the courtroom. Everyone turned and stared at him.

"Something you wish to share with the court?" the bulldog said with annoyance.

"Unfortunately yes. This affects every one of us."

"Bring it forward," the judge groaned.

Whiskers hopped off his chair, pushing through the crowd to the defendants' table, knocking all the papers and drinks to the floor as he shoved a large machine in front of Riffraff.

The object came from his pocket, and it looked like an oscilloscope with a giant satellite dish attached to it.

"My apologies for the interruption," Whiskers said. "But you all need to see this."

He pushed a button, and a huge hole opened in the side of the room, revealing the smashed front entrance of the Ewes Bank building.

"I see nothing but two hundred thousand dollars worth of property damage," Sarah said.

Whiskers pointed to the sky. "Look there! See that?"

It was a white vapor trail, like something from a rocket.

"So what," Sarah said. "It's only a jet flying overhead."

"That's what I thought at first, too," Whiskers said. "Until I saw _this!_"

He turned some dials on the device, enlarging our view of the object until we could all see it clearly.

It was a missile, bearing five glowing attachments.

"This object is bearing six times the power of an atomic bomb, and it is bearing a straight course for the midwest."

"What happens when it hits its target?" Sarah asked.

"Best case scenario, the entire North American continent will be reduced to an immense crater."

Sarah frowned. "And the worst case?"

Whiskers shook his head sadly. "You'll be wishing for the other one."


	86. Chapter 86: Sky Stations

Sarah frowned at the missile shooting through the Nevada sky. "What am _I_ supposed to do about _that_? What can _anyone_ do, for that matter? This is the _real world_. We can't just throw a giant glove up there, or call for Superman..."

"So we're toast," I said. "It's just going to blow us to pieces, and that's that."

"Master," Extra said, flying out of my shirt. "Perhaps not."

I stared. "Do you know something, bird?"

Extra bobbed his golden head. "When Miss Terious wore the Crown of the Queen, the ancients linked minds with her, and you know how little birds talk..."

"What did you learn?" I said impatiently.

"Well, Master...the device is not meant to destroy, but rather convert everyone on the planet into Zorbatronians."

"By jove!" Whiskers cried. "The Forge of Zorbatron! Of course!"

I furrowed my brow. "That's the Forge of Zorbatron?"

"See _Strange Mysteries from Beyond_ #111 - Ed."

I rolled my eyes. "You want me to order it from Amazon or something?"

He gave me a sheepish grin. "Sorry. It's a bad habit I've picked up from this place."

Whiskers cleared his throat. "The forge is a special throne, one which can transform everyone on an entire planet into creatures of Miss Terious's species. The throne, as you may have guessed, requires a considerable amount of power."

"Do we know what this..._weapon_ is targeting?" I asked.

Extra opened his mouth to speak, but Whiskers spoke first. "She intends to strike the Old Man Changing Colors, otherwise known as the Kansas City Power and Light Building."

"That's a strange choice," I said. "Why there? Was she unhappy with their service or something?"

Whiskers shook his head. "I'm afraid this will require a flashback."

"Do we have _time_ for a flashback?" I asked, but a large cloud was already forming above his head, depicting himself as a bald little German, non animated, clad in khaki clothes.

He climbed a mound in a darkened quarry, following a cloud of smoke.

"I deduce you already found out about my history," he said in a dramatic voice over. "Therefore you should not be surprised to learn about my involvement in the V2 Program with the Reich.

"What you may not know about is my involvement with Miss Terious."

The little man crossed a ridge, approaching a crashed UFO. It made me think of the ship from _The Day the Earth Stood Still_ (the old version), kind of a generic flying saucer saucer design, but colorful and glowing like the one from _Killer Klowns_.

The professor climbed through a section of destroyed wall.

The inside looked just about as generic as the outside, apparently modeled after the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, the only difference being the five mechanical cocoons, containing five non-animated squid-like creatures.

The fifth pod, standing alone before the rest, had been shattered by the crash. The professor could see a woman's limbs poking out from beneath an adjacent pile of debris.

"Oh Lord!" he cried. He had actually said this in German, but such is the nature of a cinematic flashback.

Whiskers was scrawny, but he figured out to use various objects around the ship to wedge the victim loose.

It was pretty much the same Miss Terious I knew, though she had been impaled by a piece of ceiling debris, and flickered into a glowing squid as he blood poured out of the wound.

Whiskers sawed the debris away from the wound and covered her with a blanket, carrying her back to his Swiss cottage, where he proceeded to operate upon her.

Once satisfied that he had done all he could, he tucked her into a bed (the man lived alone), and called the SS to retrieve the debris from the crash site.

"Wouldn't they notice the missing body?" I asked.

Whiskers shook his head. "This wasn't CSI. They didn't know what I did, and had no evidence. On the report, I only listed four aliens. I moved some debris to get a better look at one of the pods, to see if it could aid the Fuhrer's agenda. That was my story."

The flashback showed Whiskers studying the crash debris in a lab, Goebbels hovering over his shoulder like a vulture.

The four creatures were placed in special tanks, and Whiskers spent many hours staring at them, drawing blood, doing various tests on the samples. Mengle tried to come in and inject dye into the creatures' eyeballs, but he shooed him away.

When night came, he would sit by Miss Terious's bedside, putting cool towels on her head, brushing her hair back and gazing at her. I suppressed chuckles as I watched this.

One day his patient awoke. The first thing she did was draw a laser gun out of hammerspace and point it at his head.

"Who are you!" she growled. "Where is my crew!"

The professor introduced himself, explaining the rescue and how he had prevented the four other creatures from being harmed.

"Would you like some dinner?" he asked.

They ate quietly, steak and potatoes, wine, some chocolate. He put a record on, and they danced. She allowed herself to be called "Emm," for "Empty" had negative connotations.

He showed her his inventions, groundbreaking in their day and age, an automatic paper shredder, a typewriter that types images automatically, a mechanical lemon peeler, an energy saving toaster.

When he showed her his prototype microwave, it was clear she wasn't as interested in it as she was the mind who created it. She pushed it aside and kissed him.

They slept together.

He fell asleep in her arms, but when he woke up, he found himself alone, and alarm sirens were going off all over town.

"I found a strange silver necklace dangling around my neck," Whiskers said. "Showing me, I suppose, that I had been more than generously repaid for my act of kindness."

Following a hunch, he raced down to the lab and discovered that all his specimens were missing, along with some large pieces of equipment.

"I knew the Fuhrer to be rather unreasonable when it came to failures of this sort. For that reason, I decided to make a quick exit to the States.

"I fled with very little. Some clothing. Books and paperwork, and the necklace of course. It was easy enough to forge the necessary documents."

A couple brown shirts tried to stop me on the way to the boat, but it seemed the necklace had supernatural powers. I merely touched the men and they were transformed into rubbery skeletons dancing to _Mr. Ghost Goes to Town_.

The scene in the flashback changed to Whiskers standing on the upper deck of a steam ship. I asked if it were the Titanic, but he said no.

"Why does everyone always assume that every big old steamship is the Titanic?" he grumbled.

As he stood on the deck, fingering the locket on his necklace, Emm's head appeared in the air above the ocean, smiling at him.

"I cannot thank you enough for the kindness you have done," she said. "I apologize for leaving in a hurry, but I feared for the safety of my crew.

"Please, do not follow us. We are traveling to a freer land, one that does not suppress things like the distribution of Negro music and Cubism, a nation which can nurture our people until we acquire a power source strong enough to turn this world into a second Zorbatron, my homeworld."

"For awhile, I did just that," Whiskers narrated. "I joined the U.S. Department of Defense, sharing with them the secrets of the V2 program.

"The necklace actually aided me in some of my most important discoveries. It was actually the key ingredient in the `Bubble Bomb' I tested at White Sands. My original intention was to merely open the damn thing with a tremendous explosion. I only wanted to see how the thing worked. The spikes were only an unfortunate side effect.

"Now, I had never actually given up on finding Emm. Over the years, I had collected a number of newspaper articles about strange and unusual happenings. One in particular interested me a great deal, people vanishing from a train carrying five immense German beer casks. The incident occurred on the way to Kansas City.

"I made it a point to visit Kansas City as much as I could after that. My work for the Manhattan Project, by that time was done, so I stayed there some time, checking the various breweries for signs of Emm. There were renovations being made to the KCPL building but I didn't have permission to go into the tower to see what was being done.

"What I could plainly see, however, was that something belonging to Emm was up there, for, at night, the topmost windows lit up with the same supernatural light I'd seen coming out of her craft.

"That proved to be enough incentive for a little breaking and entering."

I watched Whiskers picking a lock, sneaking around in various computer-less offices filled with rotary dial telephones, dodging security guards as he sneaked up staircases.

He opened a door at the top of the building and saw Miss Terious seated on a throne inside a cocoon, absorbing energy from giant cables running up from the floor.

"Emm! At last!" he cried, hurrying to her.

"Heinrich!" she said, looking horrified. "How did you get up here!"

When he told her, she smiled and said, "My, you _are_ a genius."

She brought him close, kissed him, and it proved to be literally electric. Whiskers turned animated, collapsing on the floor.

He awoke in an underground room, pretty much a cinder block of concrete, surrounded by giant wooden casks with German writing on them.

Miss Terious opened one o the casks, showing the professor the alien cocoon. "My crewmembers are still in stasis, but my pod charges every day with enough energy to bring them to life. In fifty four years, they will all be placed on top of a new convention center as `sculptures', and power from my command chair will restore them to me at last! The residual energy can be used to convert the entire population of earth into Zorbatronians, allowing my people to become the great nation it once was!"

She paused, staring at me. "You think it will work?"

"Your guess is as good as mine," I said. "But that might not be enough power."

"You're right, she said, snatching the necklace off my neck.

She touched the object, twisted its shell a few times, but it did nothing. "What did you do?"

"I told her a half truth," Whiskers said to me. "I told her the bomb depleted the power. She got so upset that she knocked me unconscious. This time I found myself slumped over a bench in the train station.

"This, you see, is the reason why I hid the spikes. I couldn't let Emm take them."

The cloud over the professor's head vanished.

"Then why would she blow up the building?" I asked.

"Who said anything about blowing it up? I believe Emm intends to capture the full extent of the weapon's explosive energy and channel it into her throne."

"Still," I said. "It's a _missile_. It's not like any of us can jump up there and stop it."

"Master, you are the Bird King," Extra said.

I shook my head. "I can't demand that of my subjects. Who knows that that thing will do to their cute little bodies?"

"Perhaps you don't have to," Whiskers said, turning toward Sarah. "Your office exists on the border of two realities. Do you have any control over the location of this facility?"

Sarah paused and thought. "No. It is only present at this location."

"That's not entirely accurate," said a strangely familiar voice.

I saw a shimmering in the air, and a floating German shepherd in a red robe appeared out of nowhere.

"You again!" I said. "You're always...messing with everything!"

"Has it ever been an inconvenience?" it asked.

I frowned. "I guess not..."

"We need transportation to the Bartle Hall Convention Center," Whiskers said.

"Ah," the German shepherd said. "There is already a U.S. Bank conveniently located across the street from this edifice. Depart from the Legal Action Matrix and travel down the right corridor. Cross the plot hole, and open the door to room 130 and you will be in the main lobby."

I stared at the dog in disbelief. "Did you just say `plot hole'?"

The `green guardian' nodded. "There are countless inconsistencies and continuity errors in Cool World. Many are large enough to drive a truck through. This building exploits those plot holes to cross great distances in space and time."

I wondered how many of those I had already encountered, but wasn't sure I wanted to know the answer.

"Ms. Botts," Whiskers said. "_If you please._"

She shook her head. "There's still the matter of the two hundred thousand dollars that needs to be addressed."

Whiskers took a stack of cartoon bills out of his pocket, slamming them on the prosecution desk.

Sarah counted these by ear. "That's nice, but the front of the building is _real._"

He set down another stack of money, this one dull and highly detailed.

I gawked at him.

"I have a diverse portfolio," he explained. "I leave Cool World to check it from time to time."

"You could have saved me a lot of problems earlier," I said.

"Probably so, but then I wouldn't be able to pay for your escape."

Riffraff snatched a stack of cartoon bills off the pile. "_That's_ for demolishing my car!"

Sarah looked nonplussed, so he snatched two real bills as well. "Their noid world equivalent," he explained.

The courtroom illusion vanished, and I and my companions hurried past the double staircase, down a corridor lined with faux marble to a giant black wall that said the following in glowing white letters:

MISSING DESCRIPTION

NO EXPLANATION ABOUT HOW CHARACTERS GET TO NEXT SCENE

I paused there, staring at apparently nothing, but Whiskers pointed to it and shouted, "There! Keep going!"

On the other side, I found a row of office doors with plastic plates next to them. Whiskers turned the L shaped handle on the one marked 130 and we were looking into the lobby of an actual bank.

It was dark. The customers and staff had gone home, the check writing stands and desks unoccupied.

"Guys..." I said as I stared at the blinking security lights along the walls. "This probably isn't the best place for us to teleport."

"What's the matter, Drew?" Sneezer said beside me. "Afraid of the dark?"

He took one step into the room, and the bank alarms all went off at once.

I rushed to the entrance, but of course the door had been locked on both sides. I imagine in a fire, the alarm would release the door, or maybe the fire exit, wherever it was, but this was the `don't let the burglar out for any reason' type of alarm.

Whiskers took out a tube of lipstick, uncapped it, and drew a circle on a nearby wall. Once the shape had closed, I could see the street outside.

"This way!" he said, climbing through. "Hurry!"

Me and my own personal `Justice League' stumbled out down the sidewalk, staring up at the cityscape.

The portal closed behind us.

Directly ahead of us stood the convention center, a long flat box of a building, its sides constructed with interlocking triangular shapes, with square windows and gray panels, its roof topped with four enormous concrete pylons, with our glowing turnstile looking things at their tips, capped with red signal lights to warn planes not to fly there.

"They look like hair curlers," Riffraff muttered.

"Yes," Whiskers said. "I believe that is their common designation."

In the distance, I could see KCPL, a tall Gothic style tower topped with a glass prism that changed from red to green to yellow and back again.

As I gazed at this structure, a glowing streak shot over our heads, colliding with the prism in a spectacular explosion of light.

When the light faded, I could see the tower, intact as it had been since probably the 1930's, but now the prism was gone, replaced by a glowing almond shaped machine.

A bolt of lightning erupted from this object, striking the closest hair curler. The object lit up brilliantly in the night sky.

"We must hurry!" Whiskers said. "We may already be too late!"

"The KCPL building isn't even close," I said to the professor.

"We don't want to be there," he answered. "What we need is to disable those..._hair curlers_ to prevent her plans from coming to fruition!"

Michelangelo asked if Fruition was a yogurt, but we ignored him.

Our way into the building appeared to be across a busy intersection, through a glass and concrete lobby, and up the escalator inside.

Crowds of pedestrians stopped to stare at me and my animated friends, mostly due to the burglar alarm.

Security guards had come running around the corner, but Whiskers shot them with some sort of freeze ray.

Police sirens wailed in the distance, but, like the time my mom's car got stolen, I felt fairly certain that the sound belonged to a cop working another case, or crossing a red light to get home to his girlfriend.

I rushed to a crosswalk at the corner. Sneezer, to my annoyance, broke into song, crossing in the middle of the street, and a car knocked him down the avenue. No one else tried it.

As I pushed the crossing button on a pole, I noticed a solid blue figure in a curving Martian Manhunter cape descending from the sky.

A humanoid bird in a bra and diaper.

"Cupcake!" I gasped.

Clearly it was a ghost. I could see right through her, and she had a monochromatic color scheme.

"My king," her faraway voice called. "I have left the Great Beyond to come see you one last time!"

I swallowed. "That's great, Cupcake. I'm sorry you had to die. I really miss you."

She descended to my level, pressing her beak to my lips, but it passed through.

"Damn. I've heard sometimes it works."

"Maybe if we meet Constantine or animated Whoopi Goldberg?" I suggested.

Whiskers glanced at me impatiently, pointing to the glowing `walk' sign.

"Um, look, Cupcake. Um, I'm sure we'll meet again in the Great Beyond or something, but we're about to get arrested and Miss Terious is trying to turn everyone into aliens, so we kinda have to go."

"Oh? Where are you going?"

I pointed to the top of the convention center.

She paused and thought for a moment.

"It would be boring and time consuming for you to climb all that way. I will summon my loyal subjects to carry you to the top of the building."

I briefly wondered why she didn't do that for us at the Union Plaza, but I didn't mention it.

"Thank you, Cupcake," I said. "I...love you."

And then the Kool -Aid Man smashed through a nearby window, yelling, "Grape Beyond!" with a purple pitcher in each hand.

When he noticed us staring, he sheepishly climbed back into the bank.

Cupcake smiled at me and disappeared.

A moment later, all the remaining windows in the bank shattered, and a great cloud of cartoon birds came pouring out the window frames, sweeping me and all my friends up into the air.

Although I'd flown up the side of a building before, it was still unnerving. The birds deposited us gently on the rooftop, but I was still shaky on my legs.

I shook it off, trying to get my bearings.

Below me were glass skylights that made me suck in my breath when I looked down. Although there was a show going on, with cars, boats and RV's here and there to break my fall, the height was still enough to kill a person. The rest of the roof was nothing but slick unforgiving metal.

Hovering high above me, I could see a floating cartoon jukebox. I wasn't sure what that was doing there, but I guessed the apocalypse had a soundtrack.

That, and a musician abducting spaceship could probably find several worthy candidates in a giant all purpose civic center, if they waited a few months for, say, the Tri State Varsity Battle of the Bands.

Sneezer was the last of our company to be brought up to the rooftop, as he had been knocked down the street. He dusted himself off, gasping in awe as he stared at his surroundings.

Whiskers rushed to the nearest concrete pylon, climbing up the ladder.

"Guard the pillar!" he shouted. "I'm going to make some adjustments to the device!"

I saw a burst of light, and the professor went flying from the ladder.

A glowing bikini clad figure floated down from a nearby pylon, chuckling as her feet gracefully touched down on the rooftop.

Whiskers literally turned white. "Emm!"

"Heinrich!" she purred in an oddly amplified voice. It sounded like the foggy effect they used on TV to illustrate telepathic communication.

The turtles charged for her with weapons raised, but to no avail. Using her incredible powers, Miss Terious flung the heroes away from her, Leonardo and Donatello to opposite corners of the roof, Michelangelo slamming into a pylon, Raphael flying off the building.

Master Splinter kept a wary distance, sizing up his enemy.

Hurling my sister and the cat Vikings aside, Miss Terious floated over to the professor, flashing an unpleasant smile.

"You always were a bad liar."

"Please don't get me wrong, Emm," Whiskers said from the ground. "I will always love you. I just couldn't agree to your plan of converting all of humanity into your alien species! Such an action would make us no better than the bigots we left Germany to escape! Where would our blues music and Pablo Picasso exist in such a world?"

"That's what you never understood, Heinrich. My devices will only change your peoples' _bodies_. Removing your physical differences will create worldwide harmony while at the same time promoting the freedom and individuality we both cherish. It is no different than a Catholic school requiring everyone to wear the same uniform. The individual personality will remain intact."

"Your reasoning is flawed. All mothers know quite well that even a dress code does not fully prevent students from being picked on."

"_But it helps_," she said.

Miss Terious suppressed a smile. "Damn. We should have had kids."

She knelt down next to him, gesturing to the pylons. "Honey, this is what I stand for. This is me. If you truly love me, you'll let me do this."

"If that is you," Whiskers said. "I regret that I cannot love you anymore."

She shrugged. "Then you will die."

And she blasted him with a blinding explosion of energy.

The moment she stopped, the little labcoated guy rose into the air like a robed Green Guardian, and he blasted her back with energy bolts of equal intensity.

"I never should have given back that necklace!" she growled.

"And I never...!" Whiskers began, but then he faltered.

"You what," she challenged.

Whiskers reddened. "Nothing. You made me a very happy man. We wouldn't be fighting at all if it wasn't for this mad plan of reshaping the world into your master race."

"Is that why you avoided me for so many years? _Because you loved me?_"

"I _had_ to!" Whiskers said. "You said it yourself, I'm a bad liar! I couldn't let you know that the spikes existed! If it hadn't been for that damned cartoonist-"

He shook his head. "If you've found someone else, I don't blame you."

"I have," she said. "His name is Sleezington. He's my butler."

"Well I'm happy for you." He sighed. "Please. Don't do this, Emm. Just wake up your crew, and repopulate the planet the old fashioned way."

"What, and let my world, my culture, and everything just fade away into this insipid melting pot?"

Whiskers gave her a dismissive wave, returning to the ladder.

She shot him again, knocking him on his back. The little guy probably could have fought her off with energy blasts of his own, but he was still too much in love, I guess.

Miss Terious snatched the necklace off his neck. "Don't you ever learn?"

She decorated her throat, her illumination brightening with the added power.

Below me, I could now hear the first sirens of cop cars actually sent to investigate the break-in.

"Took them awhile," I muttered.

A bolt of electricity shot out from KCPL, striking the furthermost sky station, its power traveling through a secondary bolt to the next station over. Both hair curlers glowed white as if atomic cooling rods ready to cause a meltdown.

Suddenly, Cupcake's ghost appeared next to me.

"Drew, you must defeat Miss Terious!" she said in a faraway voice. "You are the last remaining ruler of the Bird Kingdom. All my armies and greatest warriors are at your disposal. Do not be afraid to summon them in this dire emergency. They will hear and come to your aid, even in this mystic place."

"Just think about it or something?"

She nodded. "Focus your thoughts on how much you love birds."

I laughed. "Okay?"

"Or...if that doesn't work, think about how much you love _me_."

"So I focus on things that sexually confuse and disturb me."

Cupcake shrugged.

"Maybe I should just focus on _caring_," I said.

"That will work too."

I adjusted the signet ring on my finger, thinking bird thoughts.

Seconds later, I heard shattering glass, shouting, and then it was like I had summoned the final scene of Stephen King's _The Dark Half_, a giant cloud of black birds fluttering around me.

Focusing my thoughts on how wrong it was for Miss Terious to kill Cupcake, and torture little animals, I marched up to the glowing alien and pointed. My cinematically dramatic bird swarm knocked her across the roof, unconscious, it seemed.

"Go!" I yelled to Whiskers.

"But my pendant!"

I glanced at nervously at Cupcake. She only smiled, indicating, perhaps, that I could handle it. Her confidence was contagious.

"I'll send it up to you!" I called. "Now go!"

He stared at me in disbelief for a moment, but then, after Ghost Cupcake gave him a thumbs up, he decided to trust me, starting back up the ladder.

I focused my thoughts on stealing the pendant back, and a cluster of crows and magpies flocked to Miss Terious's supine form.

Without warning, one of her hands shot up and squished one of my servants into a splatter of black goo.

Her left hand squished a second one, and when a third one darted to her breasts, her tongue shot out, frog like, sucking it into her mouth. A fourth she crushed between her thighs, and then something like a giant snail burst from her crotch, killing one more.

I knew those birds' names. They had lives and families. This information came to me telepathically. It made me mad.

Blinking tears out of my eyes, I clenched a fist, hitting her with more birds than she could possibly kill at once.

She killed every bird that touched that necklace, but the birds and I knew the play. This wasn't Steal the Bacon, this was basketball, and my team was already closing on the goal.

I don't know, I guess I must have developed a bird brain, so to speak, because I found myself mentally coordinating `bird units' like I was playing Madden NFL or something, distracting Miss Terious with `defense' while my `running back' flapped up to the professor on the pylon.

Suddenly Miss Terious jumped to her feet, blasting the distracting birds with her immense power.

While she did this. I willed a roc to throw her off the roof.

Problem solved, I thought. Then a blast knocked me across the building.

As I lay groaning on the metal sheeting, I see a blonde bikini clad figure stepping out from behind a pylon with a sexy swagger. In her hands the dominatrix twirled a fancy looking wizard staff with a crystal ball at one end.

"This isn't your fight, Drew," she said. "It's not like we're affecting Cool World in any way! Why don't you just give it up and enjoy the ride?"

"Jessica," I said. "You know this isn't right. Without a real world, what would all those cartoons have to make fun of?"

"Other cartoons," she said without even pausing to think about it. "I guess technically it would make everything a drama or a reality show, but it would definitely improve the quality. You could animate for no money at all! _Disney would go bankrupt!_"

She straddled my lap, lying down on top of me. "C'mon. Let's forget all this fighting. I know you want to get laid by a _real woman_, so why don't we just...let Misty do her thing and do it right here?"

"I'm sleazy," I said. "But not that sleazy."

"Downstairs, then. There's a bunch of mobile homes and campers with really nice bedrooms in them. Of course, it's not exactly an original idea, so we'd have to knock first..."

"No thanks," I said. "I already have someone."

"Yeah," she sneered. "And you both have the same father."

All around me, I could hear the sounds of battle as Miss Terious apparently returned from her fall. I willed the birds to throw her to the other end of the building, where the turtles and other friends fought off her energy beams with their swords, axes, and other weapons.

I sighed. "I admit you have a point, but..."

She put her hands on her hips. "But what?"

I fumbled for words.

"Tell you what," Jessica said. "I'll give you one final chance. Leave Misty's machinery alone, make love to me, or go home. Maybe all three. In whatever order you choose. Either that, _or you can die_!"

"Jess. I'd love to sleep with you, but this just isn't the right time. Not while the entire human race is in danger of extinction."

She laughed. "As if! That's why the movie _Children of Men_ was such a joke! There's too damn many people on this planet for them to ever be extinct, _even with this weapon_! I mean, say if they're _underground_ at the time, or in _Antarctica_..."

I gave her my best angry parent face. "No. This has to stop now."

"Gee," she groaned. "Here I was, willing and able to give you the benefit of the doubt, and all you did was prove to me what I already knew: That you're a self righteous _dick_."

She looked down at my crotch and frowned. "Which, incidentally, _you don't seem to have_. _Maybe you never had one!_"

"Yeah?" I said. "Well, you're just an anarchist, like that mask wearing creep from _V for Vendetta_."

She smiled. "Did you mean to compliment me, or was that an accident?"

"Mostly an accident."

I glanced at the pylon from the corner of my eye. Up at the very top, three hundred feet above the ground, I could see Whiskers doing something to a `hair curler.'

Deciding some sacrifices had to be made for the greater good, I grabbed Jessica by the neck and kissed her passionately, sliding my hands around her costume.

"Oh Drew!" she said. "_You changed your mind!_"

She reached under my kimono. "Let's see if I can change the rest of you!"

As she pulled my kimono up over my legs, unbuttoning her bikini bottom, I glanced at the pylon again, and saw the little man climbing back down the ladder.

Jessica caught me glancing.

Her face did that thermometer effect thing you see in cartoons, complete with steam escaping her ears.

"You sneaky little bastard!"

She picked up her staff, twirled it, and in one quick shot sent the professor tumbling to the roof below.

I heard the shattering of glass, and the angry honking of a car alarm.

Then Jessica starts choking me.

"You know what's going to be great about Misty's new empire? No more paper pushers like you!"

"Oh yeah?" I gasped. "Ask her about the Negro music."

She scowled. "So you're not only a dick, you're also a bigot."

"Those aren't my words," I said. "Ask _Misty._"

"That's it!" Jessica snapped, pulling a real policeman's handgun out of her bikini. "I've had enough of your stupid games! It's time for you to die!"

Jessica pressed the barrel to my head, then frowned. "No. That's not classy at all. I know it solves a lot of future problems, but I'm not some lousy street thug..."

She shot a large window out of a skylight, dangling me over the opening.

"_There_. That's better. Now when you die it will be _spectacular_, and everyone will know what a terrific villain I am."

"Wow," I said. "Now_ there_ are some lofty aspirations!"

She fought down a grin. "Oh yes. I forgot. You prefer things being a little _down to earth_!" and she gave me a shove.

As I fell, I heard her muttering, "Yes! I successfully employed a killing phrase!"

You know how a cat stretches itself across a tub to avoid getting wet? I did this with the broken skylight.

Jessica sighed. "Damn, Drew. Why do you have to make yourself such a pain in the ass? You don't even know how to _die_ gracefully!"

"From you," I said. "I'll take that as a compliment."

She leaned over me, placing a hand on my chest. "Drew, I have a confession to make. You probably know this already, but trashing your apartment was _kinda my idea_. Misty wanted to get revenge, so I sort of told her what would really hurt you without killing you. I really didn't want you to die. At least, not until now.

"You struck me as sort of a stick in the mud. You needed to loosen up. I figured maybe if I freed you from your tidy little world, you'd go out there and have some fun, maybe get yourself a real girlfriend, or maybe an animated one that isn't your sister. I guess I was wrong."

It was the psychological equivalent of getting kicked and having step on my fingers. The reality of her statements broke my animated character, turning my thoughts to the day to day things of ordinary life.

I resumed my human form.

A noid body is not as flexible as a doodle's. It cannot, for example, stretch itself out like a trampoline.

I fell through the hole.

"You bitch!"

To illustrate the height I had fallen, one could, with little difficulty, change a light bulb on the lowest part of the convention area ceiling by balancing a stepladder on the roof of a monster truck.

I fell from the _highest_ part.

In other words, _painful_.

Especially considering the fact I fell through the ceiling of a demonstration model bathroom, breaking a cross beam with my back, then banging my head on both the shower nozzle and the bathtub faucet before landing on the hard unyielding galvanized plastic tub bottom.

In my concussed semi-lucid state, I temporarily became a new organism, a one hundred percent noid-doodle blend, where my face was an animated mask and makeup on a human face that stretched, werewolf-like into the mask.

Vaporous bunny ears dangled in my face. My hands were like swollen mittens. I had on a ghostly waistcoat, through which I could see my naked chest. One of my legs was bent in an unnatural position, sending searing jolts of pain through my entire body.

I gasped for air as I arched in pain, staring pleadingly at a ceiling as broken as my body felt. Then I screamed.

...Interrupting a lecture on said demonstration model bathroom.

"...One of the first mobile shower units to successfully employ both rhino lining and Couplertec electronic rustproofing..." A middle aged woman in a slutty business dress was saying before a handful of people in a crowd of folding chairs.

Suddenly noticing the noise, she spun around and stared at me in horror.

"What the hell is that."

Her audience stood up and started clapping.

This is it, I thought. This is how I'm going to die. In a bathtub with a broken leg and a broken skull, with people applauding the show.

Was Jessica a doodle when she knocked me down here? I wondered. If so, would it grant me cartoon immortality? Or would I be caught on a technicality due to her not actually touching me at the time?

If I die, what then? Would I end up joining Cupcake's diaper party?

The only thing I really knew was that I was in a lot of pain.

I didn't die.

Still, I was in a lot of pain, and I couldn't move.

In such a brain fog, I couldn't fully appreciate the shapely legs and derriere descending from a rope above me. My eyes traveled up those garter boots with the idle detachment of a baby staring at a mobile.

My sister uncapped a thermos, holding it out for me to drink. "Here. Have some of this. You need it."

I frowned at the open mouth of the container. "More old coffee?"

She shook her head. "Not this time, I'm afraid. It's the real deal."

"No," I stammered, pushing it away.

"Your leg is broken. There's no way you can do anything without _a little outside help_."

"Amanda," I said, sitting up. "I'm _part doodle._"

"That's what worries me."

To my annoyance, I saw the crowd of folding chairs developing into a _real crowd_.

"It's all mind over matter," I said. "Like the coffee. I just need to think happy thoughts..."

I tried to stand up, but screamed.

"Drew, please," Amanda said, offering the thermos. "You'll be able to walk once you drink it."

"At the expense of my humanity," I said. "No. There has to be a better way."

And then I had it. I would completely lose myself in a role. Actually, _the_ role. My mind raced to establish a fictional history for myself to account for all the things that made me doubt I was animated, one to convince myself that the _other me_ was fictional.

I was Empress Drew Kwan of the Bird Nation. I was born into a royal family, but assassins of Miss Terious came and wiped out my kin, so I was left on Jack Deebes' doorstep.

I was adopted, I thought as I reset my leg. That's really what happened.

The penguin from _Fight Club_ suddenly popped its head out from below the bathtub exterior.

"Slide," it said, scooting across the display on its belly.

I screamed as the pain returned to my leg. At least it was set now.

I ignored the penguin. I _had_ to `go into my cave' if I were to successfully transcend this pain.

"I'm the Bird Empress!" I shouted, jumping to my feet.

I held out my signet ring, thought hard about my love for birds, and a cloud of flapping wings swept I and my sister up through the skylight, back up on the roof.

I discovered Whiskers floating in the air, circling a pylon adjacent to the one he'd finished sabotaging, shooting light blasts from his hands as Jessica and Miss Terious shot back.

The turtles knelt with their weapons out in front of them, heads tucked into their shells. Master Splinter sat on the roof with his back against a pylon, clutching his chest.

You know how in certain movies, knocking a superhero or a god unconscious can change the weather? I had a _cloud of birds_ in a holding pattern, seemingly affected by my every mood.

Sneezer, Riffraff and Cleo huddled behind makeshift shields, technically demonstration custom painted car hoods they'd stolen from a display somewhere.

Imagining my leg to be uninjured, I rushed to Splinter's side. "What happened? Are you all right?"

He gave me a stoic smile, showing me a large burn on his chest.

"I...climbed the pillar, and tore the machinery open with my claws and teeth, but after I pulled the wires out, they shot me, and I fell." He coughed. "I'll be fine. You must stop Miss Terious."

I cast him a worried look, but he was right. Splinter was animated, and the real world needed saving.

I ran (again, mind over matter) to the pylon Whiskers circled, blasting Miss Terious and Jessica back with two simultaneous walls of birds.

The Old Man Changing Colors fired a burst of energy at the pylons, and a sky station erupted in flame, presumably the one Splinter tore up.

A sudden explosion knocked me down. I had to pretend extra hard to get back into a standing position again.

I raised my ring, willing the birds to fling Miss Terious over the convoluted highway system nearby, into the Missouri River.

This took a great deal of concentration (like Bravestarr, I had to see with the eyes of a hawk to figure out the unfamiliar geography). Jessica took advantage of this distraction by blasting me backwards with her power staff.

As I lay groaning on my back, trying to return to a standing position, I suddenly noticed a cluster of birds flocking around my limp outstretched hand, a dark cylindrical object descending into my palm through the cloud of feathers.

I blinked, staring at it in disbelief.

It was Cupcake's trident.

Admittedly, it was damaged. It looked like someone had glued and soldered it back together, but it looked useful enough as a defensive weapon.

I used this to prop myself up on my feet, then I twirled it with my ninja rat skills.

I gestured to Jessica with the Asian sign for, "Here, doggy," the one they always use in kung fu movies.

She charged at me, and we had a staff battle.

It started out well enough, me and her striking and blocking each other's strikes while Whiskers half floated, half climbed up the next pylon.

But then Jessica started fighting dirty.

"So," she said, bashing her staff against my trident. "I never found out. How much _is_ left in your bank account?"

I flickered human, struggling not to feel my broken leg.

"Ooh! That looks _nasty_! You should really get someone to take a look at that!"

I tried to ignore her barbed comments, singing _Head Over Heels_ by Abba.

She laughed. "Damn, you have a lousy taste in music!"

She struck and I blocked.

"When's the last time you went to work, Drew? Did you call work and tell them about the _unexcused absence_ yet? I wonder what lie you'll come up with to cover this one!"

I flickered real, and she knocked my legs out from under me with a swing of her staff.

"Focus!" Splinter cried.

"You hear that, Drew?" Jessica mocked. "He said _focus_!"

She knelt on my broken leg. "I hear they kicked in your door and stole everything. How are you going to get everything re-established?"

Then she made a mock gasp. "Oh no! _When's rent due?_"

Jessica hit me in the side of the head, and I blacked out.

"And stay down!" was the last thing I heard her say.

As consciousness returned to me, I saw a body in a pair of garter boots and a thong kneeling beside me. A pair of gloved hands offered me an open thermos.

I glanced up at the ethereal face, framed in bunny ears.

"You're hurt too badly," she said. "You're not going to be able to walk. This is the only way you'll be able to face down Jessica."

I groaned in pain. "Can't you...just give me a niacin tablet and say it's doodle essence?"

"You have a broken leg, and she knows how to get under your skin. You've already proven you can walk, if you're animated, but as a human, not so much."

"I've also proven that I can use mind over matter to overcome my weakness," I said.

She just sadly shook her head. "You need full use of your mind to command those birds. The pain distracts you. Cupcake's ghost told me."

My head was throbbing. Probably a hairline fracture, maybe something worse.

I had to admit that it required a considerable amount of focus to both pretend I was not injured and control my birds. My humanity was becoming a liability.

"Whiskers got knocked off the pylon again," Amanda said. "We're losing time. Those remaining sky stations may still be enough to transform a quarter of the planet. We need the Bird King..._Or queen. _I hate to say it, but I think you'll need to make a _sacrifice_."

She was right. My back hurt so bad that I couldn't even get up. Even when I imagined myself to be Superman, Count Duckula, Max from _Goof Troop_, or any other cartoon, I was still paralyzed.

I stretched out a trembling hand toward the thermos, brought it to my lips, and drank the sludge to the last dregs.

The stuff tasted, well, like _ink_. Kind of medicinal. But the more I drank, the less I tasted, period.

I lost the last vestiges of my humanity to the tune of the Popeye song.

I sprang to my rodent feet gracefully spinning the trident as I eased into a fighting horse stance.

The turtles lay on their shells with burn marks on their chests. Splinter looked dead.

That left Sneezer, Riffraff and Cleo to fight Jessica and her friend away from Whiskers.

Jessica swung her staff, blocking Riffraff's battle ax.

Cleo would have stepped in to help, but she was too busy shielding her husband from Miss Terious's energy blasts.

Sneezer, however, had borrowed Donatello's staff, swinging it at Jessica's head.

"Sneezer, honey," she said as she struck the staff with her own. "Are you a virgin?"

The mouse gulped. "Maybe?"

"She blocked another ax swing, lowering her voice to a low husky tone. "Would you like me to _de-virginalize_ you?"

The mouse nodded vigorously.

"Then put the staff down so we can _negotiate terms._"

He tossed the bo aside.

"Traitor!" Riffraff shouted as he blocked Jessica's staff.

I groaned. "Seriously?"

Jessica disarmed the cats, and Miss Terious suspended them in the air with her evil powers, choking them like Darth Vader.

I rushed over to them, brandishing my trident.

"Put the cats down!" I ordered.

"They're a couple eighties rejects that weren't popular enough to have their own show," Miss Terious said. "That good enough?"

"I meant let them go!"

"Make me."

And so I gave her a bird barrage.

My bird army threw Miss Terious through a skylight, and my friends were free.

"Did you have someone take care of that leg?" Jessica asked.

I frowned at her.

"No? Were you aware that Misty had someone call your job and tell them you were quitting? It seems you _found a new job...allegedly_."

I leapt and knocked her sideways with a slap shot to the head.

Jessica popped back up with a staff attack, and our weapons clashed for a few minutes.

"When do they generally start evicting people?" Jessica asked. "_Do you know_? I bet you've got some really great backup plans for that, don't you. Go back to mommy, live rent free for awhile..._bet she'll really love that_...Who knows? Maybe she _wants_ an extra pair of slightly muscled hands around the house..."

I didn't change. Her eyes widened in amazement.

"Why Drew! If I didn't know any better, I'd assume you've suddenly grown a pair!"

Our weapons clashed again.

Sneezer cowered behind a pylon, watching us fight. I guess he intended to stay with the girl that one.

"How did you do it, Drew?" Jessica asked. "How did you make yourself one hundred percent doodle?"

I smirked. "Stop those machines and I'll tell you."

She reddened. "No way, Jose. The deal is as follows: You tell me what I want to know, or I'll beat it out of your dead body."

"Then the answer will die with me."

"God. Forget it. I'll just torture the information out of your _sister_!"

I screamed and charged at Jessica with a flurry of trident attacks. Jessica laughed, as if this were her plan all along, coming back with her own barrage.

The moment I launched my counterattack, Miss Terious came flying out of the convention center, blasting me in the shoulder. I flew sideways, sliding off the edge of the roof.

My faithful servants pulled me back up at the last second, but Miss Terious was right there, throwing down another burst of energy.

Crack!

The moment the beam of energy came my way, my sister stepped in its path, swinging her blue baseball bat.

I guess it was insulated or something, or maybe made of some kind of rubber, for the moment she swung, the beam went sailing right back, into Miss Terious's chest. The alien arced backwards with a shriek, falling to the street below.

The thing that bothered me was how well she hit the `ball', like she hadn't been trying before, and now, for the first time, she was applying herself.

No matter. There were more important things to address at the moment.

"Quick, Drew!" she said. "Stop Jessica!"

I picked up my trident and charged at my ex-girlfriend, but the weapon broke the moment it blocked her staff. Not surprising, considering how the birds appeared to have put it back together with suet, _duck tape_ and shiny things, and I had put it through a lot of abuse.

"I wouldn't have believed it before," Jessica mocked. "But you've actually made yourself more pathetic than ever before."

"This is coming from a fangirl who stalks my loser dad."

She hit me in the head, knocking me on my back.

Jessica raised her staff to run it through my skull. "You slept with your sister."

I clenched my fist, raising the signet ring. "And you promote animal cruelty!"

I blasted her back with a hundred beating wings and pecking beaks.

I jumped up, and doing my best Green Lantern pose, sent her another angry flock.

Miss Terious flew back up from the street, raising her hand to zap me, but at this point, another sky station exploded, indicating the little professor's success.

She roared and flew at the saboteur, but as she zoomed through the air, a red beam knocked her into the roof, and I saw an airplane-like Robotech robot floating down on rocket boosters. A second one followed, then a third.

Through the windows of one of the machines, I could see a figure in a fuzzy white bikini.

Miss Terious groaned and got up, setting about bashing the first one to scrap.

I guess I should have been paying more attention. As I watched this display, Jessica's staff `rang my bell.'

With doubled vision, I willed the birds to my aid, knocking her to the end of the roof, where she balanced precariously on the edge, windmilling her arms, doing that thing cartoon characters do when they're about to fall off a cliff.

Instead of doing so, she laughed and straightened, reaching into her cleavage. "Two can play at that game!"

I gasped as I saw her drawing out Cupcake's crown, placing it on her head.

"Don't be so surprised, Drew," she said, transforming into a squirrel in a magician's stage assistant costume, you know, the type that's all business on top, no pants on the bottom. "It was thanks to Misty and this crown that you're standing here right now."

She launched a flock of birds at me, raising both hands so that I flew back several yards and landed on a skylight, cracking it.

A string of explosions told me that Sarah's robots were only serving to mildly inconvenience Miss Terious. Whatever I did to help save the world, I would have to do it fast.

I tried to get up, but birds swarmed around me, thick as a cloud of flies on a dead body. I swatted at them, shouting that I was the bird king, but magpies got their beaks around my ring, lifting it from my finger.

The glass cracked more. I quickly crawled onto a metal roofing piece, making a hasty retreat.

"Goodbye, Drew!" Jessica shouted. "Good luck on your future endeavors!"

A yard away from a maintenance hatch, I saw a glowing blue figure stepping in my way.

"Where are you going, my king?" she asked.

"It's over," I said. "Jessica took my ring, and she has your crown."

"You have kung fu skills," Cupcake said.

"She can send a million birds at me, to the point where I can't even get close enough to use those skills."

"My king, you do not need a ring, or a crown," she said. "You have what it takes to rule inside of you. All the power of the birds lay within your heart. Your love, Drew. That is the key."

I took a deep breath. "Okay, Cupcake. You'd better be right."

"No, Drew. You must _believe_ I am right. If you doubt, you will be lost."

"All right," I groaned. _"I'll try._"

On cue, a ghostly pointy eared creature in a robe hobbled up to me with a cane.

Not surprised at all, I shouted, "Yoda! _I get the point!_"

In response, the little mutant looked constipated. "Giving you a chili recipe only I was!" And then he vanished into the Great Beyond.

I marched back across the roof, raising my hands out in front of me like a Dungeons and Dragons wizard casting magic missile.

At first, nothing happened. The birds didn't respond. Jessica just screamed at me, creating her own version of Hitchcock's _The Birds_ with me.

"Drew!" said a voice in my head. "The power is within you! A king is not made by his (or her) crown! It is only a symbol!"

I needed no further encouragement. With renewed confidence, I cried, "My beloved people! Pay no attention to this impostor! She and her friend only want to enslave you! Do you wish to spend the rest of your days in a wood shop?"

The birds faltered, looking confused.

"Master!" Extra cried.

"I will be a fair and just ruler!" Jessica argued. "With this crown, you read my thoughts! You know this! I mean you no harm!"

She willed the birds to attack, but I raised my hands. "My people, you also know my thoughts. _You know_ I love you."

The birds flapped her way, but she raised her hands, and they flapped back.

For an entire minute, we played a modified version of ping-pong, and then, for reasons I couldn't completely understand, my feathered friends just got horny and started screwing each other in midair. I guess it was all that mental confusion between the compassionate type of love and the romantic/sexual type, possibly on the part of both I and Jessica.

"What the hell is going on?" my foe shouted in astonished disbelief. She probably would have said the F word, but that would be self explanatory. "What are you doing! Obey me!"

I laughed. "I kind of think that's what they're doing. Freudian slip?"

I think she probably considered accusing _me_ of a Freudian slip, but I guess that was too obvious, so she instead blurted, "I don't know how you did all this without your ring, but I won't let you win. This ends now!"

She pulled out my signet ring, slipping it on her finger.

Immediately her hand turned blue, the wave of color spreading from her finger, expanding to her palm and other digits before traveling down her wrist, her forearms...

Her legs turned orange, her costume disappearing, replaced by a bra and a diaper.

Her Sexy Squirrel face vanished in a wave of blue, and a beak appeared.

Jessica looked down at her hands, her feathery waist, crying out in dismay. "No! What did you do to me!"

"How should I know? _You're_ the one with the bright idea of wearing the crown and the ring at the same time!"

"I have returned, my king," she said. "I am here."

She suddenly clapped her hands over her beak, horrified at what she just blurted.

"Cupcake?" I said in shocked disbelief.

"Mmmss mmph kimmm?" she mumbled through her hand.

"Cupcake, is that really you?"

The bird took her hands away from her beak. "Really you, as in the bitch is trying to take over my brain? _Maybe._"

She clenched her fists in anger. "I want an explanation. Now!"

"Um, maybe the crown and the ring shouldn't go together? How's _that_ for an explanation? You want to know what I did to you? Nothing! You did this to yourself!"

That earned me a look of pure hatred. "If this cannot be reversed, I'm going to kiss you. _Kill_. I'm going to _kill_ you."

She reached for her ring finger, grabbing the royal signet, but the moment her digits neared it, the ring vanished.

"No! It's not fair!"

She reached for the crown, but now that was gone as well.

"No! This can't happen! It can't!"

She reddened, glaring at me.

I only shrugged. "You think I asked to become bird king?"

"Yes. Because _you're a dork_." Jessica bounced her breasts experimentally, then stared at her hands.

"Human thoughts! Human thoughts! I left Tiger with the next door neighbor. What if they overfeed him or kill him, or he runs away while I'm out?"

She remained animated.

"Credit reports. Bills. Someone's going to tow my car because I haven't paid this month."

Nothing changed.

"I didn't change back!" Jessica looked troubled for a moment, then turned over her hands, staring at them.

"Yes! Yes! Not the way I pictured it happening, but yes!"

"See?" Cupcake said to herself. "It's not _all_ bad..."

"Yeah? What about Chad? What about my babies?"

Cupcake didn't answer, she just locked eyes with me.

"No!" Jessica said. "Oh God no! Don't you dare!"

"_We want the same things, _Jessica," Cupcake told herself. "You just don't want to admit them to yourself."

"No. I'm _definitely sure_ I don't want _that!_" But her legs were trembling. "_Mostly._"

Without warning, she pulled me into her arms and kissed me with wild passion.

A second later, she pulled away and cried, "Bleah!..._Mostly._"

She grabbed me again.

"Jessica, Cupcake," I stammered. "_Whoever you are_, we need to save the world. We can..._do this_...later."

She nodded. "You're right."

Jessica clenched her fists. "Who said anything about saving it?"

She picked up her staff, raising it to strike me in the head.

Her arms stopped in mid swing, like she were the Tin Man without his oil can. The upper and lower portions of her beak ground against each other.

"_I'm having issues_," she growled through her beak. "You must stop Miss Terious on your own."

"You touch my friend and I'll kiss you!" Jessica shouted. "I meant _kill!_"

"_Sure you did_," I said with a laugh. "Whatever you want to tell yourself."

"Good luck, my king," Cupcake said.

She slapped herself in the face.


	87. Chapter 87: World Conquest

Jessica

* * *

So. We beat Flo. Drew and his friends were surprisingly helpful.

Having the Ninja Turtles as allies helped, of course, that and the fact that Drew is pretty strong when he turns into Ninja Mouse (or should I say `she turns'? Transgender stuff is confusing, especially how the directors of the Kardassians blur out Katylin's chest like there's something to conceal, but I digress).

He and his goody two shoes buddies were going to just, I don't know, put Flo in Arkham asylum or some other dumb comic book prison like she wouldn't just break out and ruin everyone's lives again.

So I cut her head off, ending one epic struggle of good versus evil right there.

_I hope._

I guess if she comes back as the Horseless Headsman or Nearly Headless Flo, or something, it might not be too bad...

What followed was sort of a self congratulatory circle jerk, with all of Drew's buddies patting each other on the back, saying farewell ("Sniff, boo hoo, I'll see you in Cool World") as they disappeared into a magic portal the professor guy had created with a spike.

While all of this was taking place, I was checking out the other spikes, seeing who had them, and where they were.

I paused before Cupcake's lifeless body, saddened that it came to this.

A flock of birds gathered around her body, chirping their last respects. I decided I would, too.

I kneeling by her side, I placed my hand upon her back and said, "I'm sorry Misty did this to you. Although I thought you were kind of stuck up and maybe still think that wood shop is a good idea, this is no way to treat someone that tries to save your life and destroy a dangerous enemy. I could have helped you find a _real boyfriend_, and told you about all the different kinds of kinky sex, but now it's too late."

I sighed and stroked her head.

The flock looked at me strangely, half in anger, the others puzzlement, maybe a couple in lust.

They picked up their dead leader, carrying her through the portal.

As it passed, a stupid looking buzzard (one of the lusty ones), kissed me on the mouth and flapped away.

Is it wrong to say I kinda enjoyed it a little?

Maybe I've been spending too much time with Chad or something...

All right, so, back to the spikes.

Now, I cleverly _volunteered to hold onto all three of them_. The fourth, of course, having to remain where it was to hold the portal open.

Drew's dad was the real selling point, because, well, _young innocent Jessica_ actually _did_ want to save the world, and that animated old guy was kind of my buddy...up until the point where the world went back to normal and I was stranded for ten years in a boring universe where the only cartoons you could find were on TV, and I had to endure my asshole mom yelling at me night and day about how I have to give up the art business and "get a real job."

The old bastard didn't even open a portal to send me a crummy animated Christmas card.

Once certain that all of Drew's friends and family were back home where they belonged (See? I'm not a total bitch!) I rushed up to the top of the hotel sign, snatching Spike Number Four, and then, grabbing Misty's wing (she still hadn't removed that stupid bird crown), ripped Number Five out of its machine and dove through the portal just seconds before it closed.

A huge flood of black animated `stuff' came pouring out of the hotel sign like a waterfall, but hey, not my problem anymore.

Actually, not a problem, _period_. I thought it was damn cool the first time it happened.

The professor had connected his dimensional porthole to a place that looked like Sealab, but designed by the people who made Myst. An underwater sea base, giant glass dome looking out into an ocean full of exotic fish.

...Including Sorry Charlie, Finding Nemo's friends, and Jabber Jaw.

It had fancy pillars, ornate walls decorated with gold, fine art, and inventions of unclear purpose. It could easily be King Triton's vacation home, if you filled the place with water and petite Disney mermaids.

For a moment, I wondered how I would get out of there, but then I found _elevators_.

The first thing I did when I got in was grab Misty around the throat.

"What the hell were you thinking!" I shouted. "Cupcake was going to help us and you stabbed her in the back! Did you _not want_ to conquer the world, or what! You saw me floating there, _as a bird_, you saw Cupcake, fighting the other bird queen...what the hell made you think that killing Cupcake was a good idea?"

Misty still looked like an alien bird, but her voice hadn't changed.

Well, maybe a little on account of the choking.

"Me and Cupcake have a _history_," she gasped. "And I wanted the crown."

She let out a chicken cluck. "Now that I'm mentioning it, it's a royal pain in the ass. I keep thinking about bird unions and dismantling the shops. Could you please help me remove this thing?"

I pulled the crown off her head, and she returned to normal.

Immediately, she pulled out a gun, pointing it at my head.

"Choke me like that again, and it'll be the last thing you ever do!"

"Now look here," I growled. "Who is the idiotic bitch who almost screwed her own plans for world domination for petty revenge? I shouldn't even give you the spikes," I said. "All you'll do is cock it up like you've done everything else."

Misty pulled back the hammer on the weapon. "You take that back!"

"No," I said. "_I'm_ going to put those spikes in that stupid missile of yours, and _I'm_ going to conquer the world, according to _your_ plan, and _you'll_ be lucky if I'll even let you stand back and watch it!"

Misty swallowed. "Not if I blow your brains out right here."

I was nervous, but you know what they say, `Fake it until you make it.'

"I've heard if a doodle kills a noid, the noid automatically becomes a doodle forever."

Technically it was a noid gun, and we'd killed Nazis as doodles and they stayed dead, but I was hoping she wouldn't call my bluff.

Misty sighed and put her gun away. "You're a bitch."

"Ditto," I said, offering a hand. "Friends?"

She frowned. "Once you arm it, will you be keeping the missile locked on the same exact target I originally built it to target?"

I smiled. "You know it!"

She shook my hand.

I tucked the bird crown into my bikini, looking around the room.

I didn't see Chad anywhere. I assumed he was already taking care of our babies.

Jack and Holli were.._.making out_. Holli, it seemed, had started it, for it was _his_ back to the pillar.

"Whoa," he cried, breaking away for a moment. "What's _this_ about?"

"I was wrong, Jack," she said, caressing his chest. "I'm tired of being a villainess. You're a real hero, and that bird lady was a douche. I don't want to be like that. I want to settle down and raise a family. I want that house with the white picket fence you told me about."

Jack narrowed his eyes. "What's the catch."

"No catch," she said.

"With you, there's always a catch. You lead me around by my dick so you can carry out some crazy scheme."

"That was the old Holli," she said. "I guess it's all this time being with you, and other noids. I'm experiencing some real character development, and I want to be different."

"Not that I'm complaining, Holli," Jack stammered. "But I'm not sure you're thinking clearly. Are you sure that bird transformation didn't pinch your brain a little?"

"I don't know. How many times has _yours_ been pinched?" She sighed. "Look. Even separate, we've raised our daughter into a good, intelligent young superhero, and you've saved both our worlds, twice. You know what harm crackpot supervillain schemes can do to the real world, and you try to stop them. I'm really starting to respect that."

She wrapped her arms around him, bringing her face close. "I'm just wondering if you can erase that boy toy of yours and try to_ be_ a family."

"Amanda's almost an adult," Jack said. "What kind of family would we be?"

"I never finished that baby farm paperwork," she said. "We could have another."

Pressing her mouth to his neck, she added, "I have never slept with anyone but you."

Jack frowned, his expression saying volumes. He opened his mouth to contradict her.

"I mean, _not once since we first met_."

"You've been flying too close to my tail feathers," he said. "This isn't you."

"Isn't it?" she said. "Get rid of Chori, and you'll see how me it really is!"

Drew's dad lowered his voice. "You know, I only _pretended_ to be sleeping with Chori. She's only my maid. We never did it."

After that, they didn't talk. They just kissed. I rolled my eyes.

That `Dane' kid from the real world was reclining on a sofa that looked like a golden seashell, drawing demonic seahorses that floated through the air playing little guitars. Whens he saw me, she got up and hurried in front of me.

"Just the doodle I wanted to see! A little bird told me you could take me to see that Master Blaster guy and find my boyfriend! You've got to help me!"

I glanced back at Misty.

"Fine," she said with a shrug.

Now, Officer Harris and his spider friend had been lurking in this room, smoking cartoon cigarettes and eavesdropping on me, apparently, for now he approached us, looking rather grumpy and serious.

"I couldn't help but overhear your conversation about a missile..._one involving five spikes_. Now, I'm _not entirely certain_ how you'd put five spikes into a weapon, if Professor Whiskers is, even now, in the process of burying each and every one of those damned things in secret undisclosed locations in the real world."

"It's a figure of speech," I said. "We're going to use radioactive rods from one of the nuclear power plants in Cool World."

He gave me a smug smile. "Right. That's why your bikini is glowing." And he snatched a spike out of my top.

I punched him in the face and snatched it away from him.

I looked back to warn Misty, but she was already pulling me back to a glowing circle on the floor.

Harris tried to follow, but she shot him in the knees, and while he was bleeding ink on the floor, and his spider was coming after us, those giant metal hoop things from Stargate dropped down around our bodies. We vanished in glowing light.

As the room disappeared, I could hear Dane shouting, "Hey! What about me!" but I didn't get to find out.

I blinked, and I was standing inside Master Blaster's jukebox again.

His cat friends were dressed in bronze Egyptian apparel, bearing those Joffa laser staffs like they had in all the Stargate shows and movies. Master Blaster wore a similar costume, though considerably more Pharaoh-like, with too much exposed belly.

"I thought it would be more intimidating," he said. "What do you think?"

"You're probably the most accurate representation of Egyptian nobility to date," I said. "Bloated from the excesses gained from exploiting the poor and lower castes."

Misty elbowed me. Hard.

"Sorry. It looks..._nice_. Thank you for rescuing us from that cop."

"We are prepared to assist you in moving this floating vehicle into the real world," Misty said. "I only ask that you would beam aboard our weapon, to be discharged upon our arrival on the other side."

Master Blaster frowned. "And how much does it weigh?"

"It's a missile," Misty said. "So about the weight of an elephant."

"I'm sorry. If I put something of that size onboard, I don't think any amount of spikes will allow for its passage. My jukebox is already too large as it is."

"Maybe it should go on a diet," I muttered. When he glared at me, I pretended to be having a coughing fit.

"Fine," said Misty. "Here's the deal, then. We help you get your jukebox into the real world, we leave you there to capture as many musical slaves as you can find, and we in turn take the spikes back to arm our missile, maybe give you what's left of the energy once the weapon is deployed. How does that sound?"

Master blaster rubbed his fake Egyptian beard thoughtfully. "It is fortunate that I have no higher aspiration but to amass as many musical slaves as possible. I agree to your terms."

I took out all the spikes and placed them in Master Blaster's machine. I suspect he did some renovations to the device in our absence, to allow for the spikes, for I think there weren't that many slots before.

Master Blaster played some notes on the pipes, which sounded oddly like that bone organ thing that they had in _Goonies_, kind of a loud protesting moaning, like a semi truck horn.

The whole vehicle shook, the masonry, statues and stuff crumbling and breaking off all around us.

_Things were getting real. _The jukebox, once made completely out of ink and paint, was now looking more and more like a real building. With all that glass and metal, it was no wonder the thing couldn't escape the pull of Cool World without help.

The jukebox vibrated like crazy, the walls glowing all sorts of different colors. I heard a weird grinding noise, then everything took on the appearance of a film with a fish eye lens.

There was a deafening pop, and then suddenly the interior became like a jumbo jet remodeled in the rock glamorous style of the Hard Rock Cafe, its huge glass windows displaying a spreading view of the Vegas Strip.

"At last!" Master Blaster shouted. "We have broken through the barrier! No more mirrors!"

"Actually," I said. "We may need _something_ to get back with."

This gave him pause. "You're right. My pets will eventually have to do a _supply run._"

"He means ice cream," Fat Cat said.

"_Well_..." Misty brushed imaginary dust off her hands. "_It looks like you're situated._ If you wouldn't mind, I have a planet to reformat. _With those spikes_."

Master Blaster frowned. "And you're saying I'll still be able to fly around the world and enslave musicians without the spikes."

"Yes."

"And the musicians will not at all be affected by your transforming weapon."

"Of course."

It seemed the man was changing his mind. He looked very..._suspicious_.

I decided to throw in my two cents.

"Listen. You're an unidentified flying object, which will make it a teensy bit hard for you to not be shot out of the sky by anti-aircraft weapons and the United States Air Force.

"If you allow us to launch that missile with the spikes attached, you won't have to worry about that again. They'll all be under Misty's power. In fact, they'll have you registered on all Federal databases as a protected treasure of national culture. Isn't that right, Misty?"

Misty looked hesitant, but still blurted, "Yes."

After pausing in thought for a long time, Master Blaster said, "You must first remove a single spike, to see whether or not it affects the vehicle's performance."

This we did. I stuffed a spike into my bikini, waited five minutes, and saw no change in the jukebox's stability. It still floated on fat beats and p-funk.

So we grabbed another, giving it the same kind of test. Master Blaster's orders.

Misty was fuming and stomping her foot angrily, but I convinced her that a great deal of reward can come by the simple act of waiting, reinforcing my point by showing her the spikes I already earned.

At last, I had them all, and Blasty opened a mirror portal to Misty's high rise.

Sleezington was overjoyed to see his girlfriend again. They were so busy kissing that I had to clear my throat and remind them they had a world to conquer.

"How romantic," Sleezington muttered. "We shall conquer it..._together_."

Misty clutched his hand tightly. "Yes."

Chad met me in the living room, with Isosceles in the carrier. We kissed just as passionately as the other two, but I was more aware of the time. Pulling away, I said, "Honey, I'd love to continue this, but it's going to have to wait a minute."

I pulled out a pair of spikes. "This needs to be taken care of first."

He groaned, but nodded appreciatively.

We took the elevator down to Misty's underground Bond villain base (it really should have a name, but I never asked her to make one for it) and we entered the missile command station, preparing our weapon.

The room containing the device looked like a hangar merged with a silo.

Misty's Minions, groups of mutant animal creatures with oddly realistic shading, and, strangest of all, _animated birds_, all in lab coats and radiation gear, all busied themselves preparing computers and rocket fuel and computer guidance equipment and other weapon components for our mad plan, making me wonder if A: I was underdressed, and B: If I were going to get cancer from carrying around glowing spikes in my bikini.

I handed all five spikes to Misty, watching her servants screwing them into strategically built sockets along the plating.

The rocket rose into a launching position, the ceiling opening to reveal a glowing portal leading to photorealistic clouds in a real sky.

Chad grabbed me around the waist, pressing his muzzle into my neck. "Let's go upstairs, wildflower," he purred.

"What," I said. "And miss the launch?"

"We can watch from my suite. I have a large screen monitor. _High definition_. We have ten minutes before the rocket goes off. We can make those minutes _interesting,_ if you like."

"Well," I said, half heartedly.

He tugged my arm. "Come. I have much I wish to tell you."

I groaned and rolled my eyes. "_Okayy..._ I hope I get a good view."

As Chad led me to the door, Misty gave me a Nazi-esque salute.

"Misty," I said. "Do me a favor. Never do that again."

"Sorry," she said. "It was popular where I crash landed."

"Is this in one of those numbered comic books that I'm supposed to have read?"

"Not this one," she answered.

Misty showed me her origin story in a flashback. It wasn't quite what I expected.

It seems that she had an existence outside Cool World, and the stories she told me about her family had been slightly modified to cover the real information.

Apparently she had a fling with the little professor guy, before he became a toon, and one of the framed pictures was actually of him and her, though altered a little to cover the truth.

She touched something on her outfit, and she was a glowing squid-jellyfish thing, floating in the air.

"So," I said. "You're going to turn everyone in the world into copies of..._that._"

"Does this disturb you?" Misty said in a disembodied voice.

"Not really," I said. "Whenever I watch an alien invasion movie, I often think that the world might be better if the humans didn't fight back."

Misty nodded, which is an odd gesture for a tentacled ball of jelly. "Then _enjoy the show._"

"She means we can go upstairs and have sex if we wish," Chad whispered.

"Don't ruin it," I said. "And no, I don't think she meant that at all."

"I might have meant that," Misty said.

"That, uh, really ruins it," I groaned. "Let's...go, Chad."

We went into the elevator leading to the suite.

After a moment of silently standing and listening to the lift, Chad muttered, "Jessica, are you finished with conquering the world now?"

"I might be. It's really a lot of work. I had no idea it required so much effort."

"So what now?" he said.

"I...I'm not sure. Maybe I'll draw a few landscapes, see where they take me."

"Would you consider _settling down_?"

I stared at him. "What?"

Chad dropped to one knee, pulling out a ring box, which opened to display a disproportionately large diamond that couldn't have fit into such a small box.

"Will you marry me?"

I swallowed hard. "Uh...Chad...I..._I really need to think about this a little._"

I saw an X-ray of his chest, showing his heart shattering into a million pieces. I grabbed his hand and squeezed it. "Oh Chad. It's not like _that_. I just need to _think about it_ a little, okay? _ We already slept together..._"

He smiled a little and straightened. "Perhaps you would like to decide over some champagne."

I nodded. "That...sounds..._like an idea..._"

The doors opened to his suite, and he led me into the kitchen, pouring me champagne that tasted like that "Mexican" apple flavored soda pop they serve at Taco Bell. I smiled politely, and he pushed a button, making a movie theater sized monitor slide out of his living room floor.

The rocket wasn't doing anything. We were still counting down.

"I and Sleez have been busy while you were gone," Chad said. "My lovely rose, would it disturb you greatly if I said that all of our children, with the exception of Isosceles, have been genetically modified into alien soldiers for Misty's army?"

I paled. "_It might._ I mean, I was okay with her changing some into evil soldiers for the empire, but not _all _of them. I kinda thought I'd have some babies left of my own, _to raise as babies._"

"I was having difficulty taking care of them all. They did nothing but cry all the time."

"That's what babies do," I said.

He shook his head. "Not doodle babies. Not generally."

I sighed. "As long as we have Isosceles, I guess I'll be all right."

"I thought you might say that."

I reddened. "And what else did you think I'd say!"

"Love blossom," Chad said. "I have not been entirely honest with you. It is thanks to Misty that we came together. She..._arranged_ for our romance. We've been planning this for some time. The moment you arrived in Cool World, she planned to use us to create babies she could experiment with, to make an army of half doodle noid soldiers."

"So you've been lying to me this whole time?"

He gave me this look like he had.

"Your eye, the tutu, your dolls, _you being lonely?_"

"No, actually all of that is true," he said. "I _was_ lonely, and I do like dolls and ballet. But I...am _shy around females_, and this as the only way I could..._find love._"

He didn't seem that shy to me, but I didn't press the subject. "Still, this was an act...is all this S&amp;M gear yours?"

Chad blushed. "_Maybe?_"

He pointed to my bikini. "I _wear_ that sometimes."

I shuddered a little, stepping back from him.

"So. This has all been a scam."

"_A very enjoyable scam_, but yes."

"_Wow_. I...um...I've _kinda been used_, huh?"

"You did not object to it so much, did you? _You already wanted to conquer the world_. You seemed very eager..."

"True," I said, stepping further back, toward the elevator.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"I, uh, have to talk to Misty."

He tried to follow, but I sad, "Please, Chad. I...need time to think. Alone."

"Will you also think about marrying me?"

"I'll also think about that," I said, careful not to say anything that could be construed as a yes. "I'll...I'll be going now."

"Passion flower! I still _love you_! I have loved no one else _this way_!" Please say you will stay and help I and Misty conquer the world!"

"I'll definitely think about it."

I stepped into the elevator, staring at him longingly, yet conflicted, not ready to take that plunge into his darker side. My heart said yes, but my brain said wait, and it was time to use my brain.

As the doors closed, he gave me a sad pouty look that made me want to run to him and wrap my arms around him, but it was too late.

I also realized, much too late, that I had entered an elevator that looked like a skull, and the Go-Go Ghostbusters music was starting in the background.

The elevator dropped like all the cables had been cut.

I screamed.


	88. Chapter 88: Flipping the Bird

I was put through a musical montage in which machines stripped me completely naked and slapped me into a Ghostbusters costume.

I got the boot, tumbling down a slide, which, ironically enough, dropped me on top of the _other_ Ghostbusters vehicle, from the _other cartoon_.

I thought I'd at least pull a Fred Flintstone and land in the back seat, but I instead rolled off the shell and landed on pavement. The car sped off without me.

No biggie. I didn't want to bust ghosts anyway.

I changed back into my other clothes, enduring the wolf whistles and catcalls that were apparently unavoidable in this world, even in a darkened alley, with no audience anywhere in sight.

When I exited the alley, I noticed a flock of birds flying overhead, bearing the body of their queen.

The time progression didn't seem quite right to me, but I supposed that cartoons always tend to have problems with `real time', often conveniently so, as in James Bond's Incredibly Slow Moving Death Trap.

This one proved convenient for the birds, for once I'd spotted the funeral procession, I found myself being swept up into the air with them.

They carried me over a really big suburb, one that probably shouldn't be called a suburb on account of its size, but hey, it featured nothing but middle class white people houses...

Past this place, I saw a picturesque forest which, I believe, was where they filmed all those Keebler Elf and Jolly Green Giant commercials...and maybe _Bambi_ type stuff.

In the middle of this scenery, there stood a huge ball of twigs. The bird palace. They took me there.

It was a lot more impressive on the inside than the outside. The interior was like a castle made entirely out of bent wood.

The moment my feet touched ground, my hands were clamped behind my back with shiny sparkly handcuffs, and I was marched through a crowd of animated birds from every conceivable cartoon (Chillee Willy was pissed!), to a large throne at the end of the building.

Cupcake's body lay before this throne in a coffin of bent twigs, looking calm and peaceful as Sleeping Beauty, despite the fact she had just been stabbed to death.

I found myself standing face to face with that big dark scary owl from _The Rats of NIMH_, clad in a red robe and a crown.

"Uh...hi," I said. "How are you?"

The owl didn't reply, his glowing eyes slightly unnerving me as he regarded me in statue-like stillness.

Deciding to clear the air a bit, I said, "I want to give you guys a formal apology. I told Misty not to kill your queen, but she did it anyway. I had nothing to do with it. She was just being a mean stupid bitch."

Mr. Owl didn't speak. He just stared.

"Do you actually smile sometimes?" I asked. "Like if someone tickles you?"

At last the owl said, "Your friend has left a great void in our kingdom. This void cannot remain unfulfilled, or it will destroy your world."

I swallowed. "What are you saying?"

"We need you to rule the kingdom of birds in Cupcake's place."

I looked around the castle with nervousness. "No offense, but I don't like birds that much. Their mouths really aren't that expressive, which makes them kind of creepy."

"You apologized for the Queen's death. You have remorse, meaning that you still deeply care for all of us."

Suddenly a hundred birds were giving me sad `puppy dog eyes'.

"Thanks," I said. "But no thanks. Don't you guys already have a king? Isn't that what Drew is?..._I thought I heard that somewhere._"

The owl nodded. "He is our king. But we cannot have a monarchy without a queen to rule by his side."

I cringed.

"Oh no." I took several steps backwards. "Oh God no. No way."

"_Yes way_," he said.

"You are both part noid," said one of the blue birds that used to fllow me around, Tito, I believe. "You both care deeply for birds. You are perfect for each other."

Well, I thought. I _had_ originally tried to sleep with him...

Still, this kind of scene really wasn't my thing.

"You showed great creativity and innovation at the baby farms."

"In a way a computer hacker shows promise when caught by corporate security," the owl agreed.

"So," I groaned. "You want me to _beef up your infrastructure._"

"Precisely."

I turned to run, but I was still handcuffed, and was quickly buried in flapping wings and feathers.

When my vision cleared, I was sitting in a little house, designed to look like a bird cage, suspended above a bottomless chasm.


	89. Chapter 89: Epilogue

Not a whole lot to do in the little bird house. I mean, it had some creature comforts, like a bed, kitchen, shower, and a TV, but bird cable was a little ridiculous.

Judge _Whoo-Dy._

The Big _Bawk _Theory.

Diners, _Fly-Ins and Dives._

They had _Falcon Crest_ with literal falcons, and a Doctor Who (actually `Whooo') who occasionally regurgitated a bone puck after devouring a mouse. Corny. I shut it off.

I grabbed a controller and was about to play "_Caw of Whoooty" _on their "X-Bawks" when I suddenly noticed a glowing blue figure seated in the couch next to me.

The queen.

She picked up a controller. "There's a two player cooperative mode on this."

I shrugged and started a game with her.

Nothing really groundbreaking. It was just a generic _Call of Duty_ game with birds in it.

"What we're doing now is symbolic of the joint rule I wish us to have over the bird kingdom."

"For that I'm going to blast you," I said, unloading a few rounds into her player.

We didn't talk for a few minutes.

"What's it like on the other side?" I asked.

"It's all right," she said. "I'm a cartoon character, so I sat on a cloud and played a harp for awhile. Got tired of that, went down to a fun little diaper party in limbo..." She sighed. "I was told my time was not yet, which makes what we discuss very important."

"What do you want me to do?" I said. "I saw you getting stabbed and bleed out. Face it, you're history."

She answered, "You can return my life to me. If you agree to assume the throne."

I blasted some uniformed _cat_ on the screen. "I'm sorry, Cupcake. I can't. You're going to have to go back to your little diaper party. I'm not interested."

I pressed pause. I expected the screen to say "paws" like it does in some games, but they're birds, so whatever. "Is there any way I can use this TV to check on that missile Misty sent up? I want to see where it is now."

Cupcake touched her temples with her fingers, and a wavy bubble appeared before me, showing the rocket taking off in the air.

"There. How's that?"

"Great," I said. "Now look. Isn't there some other way we can bring you back to life that doesn't involve me becoming queen forever?"

"I don't see why you're making such a fuss over it, Jessica. Do you have something important to do in the noid realm?"

She had me there. I didn't. Other than conquering the world, which I wasn't sure I wanted to do anymore.

Still, it was better than hanging out with all the bird brains...

"I...can I have some time to think this over?" I asked. "It's a lot of responsibility..."

Cupcake gave me a nod. "I'll give you a day to think it over. When you're ready, simply place my crown upon your head, and wear my symbol. You _do_ have my crown, don't you?

I pulled it out of my bikini. "Right here."

"Good."

She touched the crown, and it glowed, the inside flaring with a string of glowing Elvish symbols.

Well, they looked Elvish to me, and I'm mostly basing this off of a collectible glass I got from Burger King, not because I'm a geek.

"Uh, Cupcake?" I said. "Can I please go outside to think this over?"

"You most certainly may." She wiggled her beak and the cage door suddenly popped open.

I hurried to the `porch', looking around for a way to safely cross the chasm, but there wasn't any.

"I meant your castle," I said. "Can you help me out a bit further by taking me back where I came from? Please?"

Cupcake smiled. "It would be my pleasure. All you need to do is _wear the crown_, and_ summon the birds to your aid._"

I rolled my eyes. "Nice try. If you wouldn't mind..."

Instead of helping me, she vanished.

"Stupid bitch," I grumbled. "You're actually making me _glad_ you're dead!"

All of a sudden, I see a bunch of termites chewing a hole through the wall of this dungeon, one big enough for a person to walk through.

And then I see Misty coming through the opening, on the back of a giant scarab beetle.

The bug flew across the chasm, latching onto my cage.

"Are you cozy here?" she asked. "Or would you like a ride out?"

"Out, please," I said.

She ordered her bug to rip open some bars, and in no time I was back outside, zooming over the forest.

"Be careful with the wings. This belongs to my sister."

"You know, I haven't seen your sister around, Insectia, isn't it?"

"Yes, that's her name."

"If I remember your story correctly, shouldn't she be stuck in a capsule somewhere, ready to be awakened, instead of hanging around with bugs in Cool World?"

She sighed. "Okay. You got me. I actually cloned myself, and there was a bug inside the machine at the time."

I chuckled. "I see."

"I hear you and Chad got into a disagreement," she said as we crossed over suburbia. "I admit I haven't been very forthcoming about certain things..."

"Yeah," I agreed. "Of course, I can't honestly tell you that I _didn't_ have fun..."

"So you'll stay and help Chad raise Isosceles?"

"I though I'd have more to raise than just that."

Misty brought the bug to the ground in front of the apartment. "Oh come now. You honestly expect me to believe that you'd be happy as a full time stay at home mom?"

"These are _semi-animated _children we're talking about," I said. "I wouldn't have to change poopy diapers or clean up barf or scrub slimy Cheerios out of my car upholstery, so yes."

She gave me a consoling pat on the shoulder. "I'm sorry. I thought, with you knowing villains as well as you do, that this wouldn't be a surprise."

I thought about it a minute. "I guess you have a point. I'm not really _that_ shocked. I'm more disturbed than anything. And mostly on account of Chad."

"You don't necessarily _have_ to stay with him if you don't want to."

I didn't know if I wanted that, either. "Well..."

Misty dismounted her flying steed, clapping her hands. "Let's focus on conquering the world, shall we?"

"That's an excellent idea."

Misty had one of Master Blaster's magic mirrors set up next to her missile launch station, so we only had to step through to enter the floating jukebox.

We were hovering over downtown Kansas City. Below me I could see a pointy concrete skyscraper with a multicolored prism on top, likely the KCPL building, and a few streets away, the Bartle Hall convention center.

Me and that center had a love-hate relationship. I sold a couple prints during an art show one year, but the following year, _nada_, and this creep kept trying to stalk me in the bathrooms and pull down my skirt.

And don't get me started on their sales tax. How is anyone supposed to make a profit when tax _equals_ the amount of your sale?

I stared at the building in disbelief. "Seriously? _Here_?"

Misty pointed at the metal turnstile things on top of the structure. "Do those look like a feature of an ordinary building to you?"

"No," I said. "I've always thought those came from outer space. They're hideous."

"Disguising them as pathetic attempts at sculpture was part of the plan."

"That was a good plan!"

"Now," she said. "I need you to guard the stations at Bartle while I take over the main pod at KCPL. Can you do that?"

"I'm right on top of that, Rose," I said.

She stared. "My name isn't Rose."

"Never mind," I groaned. "It was in a movie."

Master Blaster used those giant Stargate rings to beam us into position. I waited on the roof for maybe a half hour, and then the missile came, smashing the glass prism on the other building, electrifying it and the sky stations. Well, mostly the prism.

A few minutes later, Drew and his buddies came in, wrecking everything.

And so we fought.

To make himself even more of a prick, he's got his magic ring, sending huge flocks of birds at me, trying to knock me into the street below.

I'm sorry, but Drew was really pissing me off. I knew his weak spot was real stuff like taxes and his bank, so I brought down his defenses by reminding him of these things, again and again. I threw him through a skylight, into the convention center.

Before I dropped him, I stole his ring.

I thought that would be the end of him, or at least hurt him enough to leave our stuff alone, but no. He pops back out and we start fighting again. Apparently he drank or ate something that made him permanently doodle-fied, which made him a pain in the ass to kill or throw off the roof.

In addition to that, he somehow manages to control the swarms of cartoon birds with nothing but his mind. I guess he always was a bird brain.

I wore the crown out of desperation. The moment I put it on my head, I knew it was a mistake, but what was I supposed to do? He was about to kill me!

"I knew you'd change your mind," Cupcake's voice said inside my head. "You will make a fine queen."

I didn't answer verbally, but in my mind I saw myself commanding an army of evil birds, aiding Misty with her ambitious project, and, most importantly, exploiting the feathered kingdom for menial woodworking tasks.

I could feel the bird queen smugly observing these thoughts, scoffing at them.

I called the birds to attack Drew and throw him over the side.

Drew, I guess, had been doing the same.

And then, I don't really know why, but our birds all started..._going to town_ on each other, like it were mating season or something. Drew suggested it was a Freudian slip, but...well...

Okay, fine. I was kinda thinking about being his queen, but it wasn't a conscious thought that I'd intentionally think on purpose.

Anyway, there was only one way to even the fight in my favor, and that was putting on that stupid ring I stole from him.

I probably shouldn't have done that.

Cupcake took over my body. She _possessed_ me. My ordinarily sexy doodle body became..._bleah_.

All right, so she's kind of cute, but it's not something I want to wake up and stare at in the mirror every morning.

"What did you do to me?" I cried.

"I'm making you into a queen."

My brain was flooding with ideas about restructuring the baby farms. I slapped myself, trying to force myself to stop thinking about it.

"Stop! I want my body back!"

"When I'm through with you," she said. "You won't want it back."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked.

She didn't answer, she just told Drew to continue ruining Misty's plans, while she._..resolved our issues_.

"Tell me," I said. "What's happening to me? _Why_ is this happening?"

For some reason, she smiled and winked at me.

"You know perfectly well, Jessica. For now we share the same mind."

"Shut up!" I shouted. "You're dead!"

"Yes," said Cupcake. "And you are partly responsible."

"So this is revenge."

"Not quite. In death, I have gone beyond that. Jessica, the crown of the bird queen can only be worn by someone who is worthy in thought."

I laughed. "You really think I'm royal material."

"No. That is why I had to leave my diaper party in the Great Beyond to join minds with you. You are not worthy on your own, so I must shape you into a proper queen."

"By possessing me."

"It has been proven necessary."

"What about Misty? _She_ wore the crown, but nothing happened to her..."

"She did not assume the throne. My people allied to her out of simple necessity. They didn't want someone worse than her enslaving them. The ancients understood her intentions in thought enough to allow her power only until Flo no longer posed a threat. Your friend agreed mentally to abdicate the moment this was a certainty.

"You, on the other hand, _defeated Flo._ This cannot be understated."

"And what about the ring?" I asked.

"The ring is the heart of the bird queen. Only a leader with a kind compassionate heart can be deemed worthy of wearing the ring."

"Hence why you transformed my body into this," I groaned.

"Actually, you _do_ have more compassion than you let on, which is why I haven't destroyed you utterly from this body. There is a real bird queen's heart beating feebly within your breast. You don't want to admit it, but your heart hurts a little every time you see an animal being abused."

"Well..." I sighed and shook my head. "Are you going to give my body back sometime? Please say you are. _Please._"

She answered by slowly waving her hand at me.

And then, reality faded away, and I found myself floating in a white void, occupied by giant crystals with bird perches, suspended by nothing, and large ghostly bird heads that reminded me of that Necronomocon guy from _Evil Dead_.

I drifted downwards, alighting on a long wooden board. When I glanced backwards, I came to the sudden realization that I had taken the place of a kookoo in an immense kookoo clock. At present, the board didn't look like it was going anywhere, so I just took in my surroundings.

"Hello?"

My voice echoed through this place like I were in a cave.

"Is there anyone there?"

A flock of winged creatures in red capes came flapping down from the void above me, settling on the perches of the surrounding crystals.

All birds, all in robes, looking like those blue midgets from the _Green Lantern_ comics.

"Can someone explain what's going on?" I asked. "Please?"

Suddenly Cupcake appeared in the air next to me, a hovering blue phantom in Depends.

"I think a more in-depth explanation is in order," she said. "I believe you deserve that much."

"Ready, _go!_" I said impatiently.

Cupcake cleared her throat. "Your friend's spear was made of noid alloy, which means my old body cannot survive in its current state. It will likely turn colorless and fade into nothing."

"But that's okay," I said. "You have your limbo diaper party."

"I'm afraid it isn't that simple. You see, I'm too important."

"The bird kingdom must never be without a queen to rule the Roost," a robed crow on one of the perches said in an ominous booming voice.

The Sorceress from He-Man was seated on a crystal next to my clock, looking very frail. "My power continues to weaken as long as there is no bird queen on the throne!" she cried in an overly melodramatic way.

Groan.

"You have been selected for the replacement of our queen," said the blue bird from the Disney movie, _Rio_, also in a robe. "But your education is not yet complete."

"Education!" I cried. "I have a four year bachelors degree from _art school!_"

Everyone laughed at me, and it echoed.

"I will take over your body, to teach you the right way," Cupcake said. "When you have learned to rule the kingdom to my satisfaction, I will depart, and you will regain the use of your body once more."

"And what if I never do?" I said, suddenly feeling cold.

"I am a fictional character," Cupcake said. "By joining your mind with mine, you add memories, knowledge, and a rich tapestry of emotion, giving my personality a depth previously unheard of since the very beginning of Cool World."

"So I'm fleshing out your flat character."

"Perhaps you should think of it as me fleshing out yours!"

"Are you saying my personality is flat?" I said, anger edging into my voice.

"No...but you _do_ strike me as a bit..._shallow._"

"I'd strike _you_, if you weren't already a ghost!"

She just smiled.

"I have taken you to this mystic place to help you through the transition. This way, if I decide to do something you find unpleasant, like killing your friend Miss Terious, or having sex with Drew, you will have a place to stay in, until you can learn to accept the new situation."

"Ugh!" I said with a shudder. "Seriously?"

"It is an appropriate villain's punishment, I'd say. One that is more than fair to both parties involved. You'll still be you. I'll just borrow your body from time to time, and you, in turn, can take care of important matters where my body resides."

"So, what. Do I just float around here and talk to robed Woody Woodpecker while you ruin my life?"

I wasn't joking. He was standing on the perch to the left of my clock.

"Actually," Cupcake said. "I _did_ have another plan for you...You see, Cool World has a magical history, and I have ways of sending your consciousness back there, _into the body of another doodle_, while I take care of matters _elsewhere._"

"Why don't _you_ go elsewhere and get out of my head?" I demanded.

"Eventually I will," she said. "But at present, I have to save the world. Enjoy your little vacation in..._Dungeons and Dragons_!"

"What?" I said, but by then the realm of the bird council was gone, and I was sprawled in a field somewhere in the middle of a forest.

Looking down, I saw that my arms were white, and ended in _hooves_.

Hooves! I thought. You're a bird queen! What right do you have putting anyone into the body of a hoofed thing?

But then I saw a scrawny looking wizard in a green robe, who just happened to have a bird-like beak...due to being a dragon.

"Uni!" he called. "Uni!"

Next to him, a little barbarian guy with a Viking helmet was yelling too. This guy also happened to be a bird beaked dragon. "Uni!"

I looked around to see if I could humor him by finding this enigmatic "Uni," whatever it was, but as I was circling around, the barbarian guy rushed over to me, squeezing me to his chest. "There you are!"

And then he kissed me on the mouth, which was extra strange.

I jumped out of his arms, shaking myself indignantly.

"All right. That's enough of that!" I shouted, but the only thing that came out was, "Nyaah myaah nyaah."

This. I had to deal with _this_ while Cupcake took off with my body and ruined everything.

In an impotent rage, I pounded my hooves against the dirt and screamed.

"Myaaaaah!"

* * *

000000000000

Drew

000000000000

* * *

"Drew!" Whiskers called from a sky station. "I'm about to reverse the polarity on the neutron flow! Keep Emm away from the pylon!"

I gave him a grim nod.

"Turtles!" I shouted as I chased after Miss Terious. "Cats! Birds! Anyone! This is your chance to save the world! Stop her!"

The moment I said this, four strange figures leapt down from the sky stations, blocking my path.

They resembled Miss Terious, with only slight variations. For example, one female was green, with a pony tail and mandibles sticking out of her jaw. One had no eyes, and had a proboscis for a mouth. There was a male, but he was clad in an exoskeleton bikini similar to the others.

It seemed they had been restored from hibernation just like Emm had planned.

I glanced up at the stations and saw Whiskers climbing down the final one, his task completed.

Miss Terious had been fleeing, but now she stopped, shouting to her comrades.

"Attack and kill those saboteurs, then repair the sky stations! Zorbatron must live again!"

The other aliens cheered in agreement, then went on the offensive.

I sent my birds ahead, but the aliens drew swords and diced them to bits. I would have sent another swarm, but I felt bad enough about the last one.

The Ninja Turtles came in, engaging in combat with them, but they got thrown across the roof.

Another one flung my sister down to the street, but I figured she was okay, being completely animated and all.

Riffraff and Cleo charged with their barbarian weapons, but they fared no better. Neither did Sneezer.

Even Master Splinter with his Kung Fu moves, couldn't get through.

I thought we were done for until I heard the last sky station explode.

Misty's crewmates turned toward the source of the noise, and as they did, the top of KCPL exploded.

The aliens screamed, clutched their chests, and collapsed on the roof. It seemed they hadn't fully charged or something.

"No!" Miss Terious yelled angrily.

Actually, one of the creatures survived. The green lady.

All of a sudden, its body turned titanium white, and a stalk with a ball of red fur at the top exploded from its head. Cat ears popped out the sides of its head, and it gained weight.

"I feel funny, kupo," it said. "I climbed inside one of those sky stations, and it messed me up bad, kupo."

I rolled my eyes. "Sorry to hear that. Can you please help me stop this crazy-"

A second later, I see a real knife tearing a hole in the creature's chest, a pint of ink gushing from the wound.

"I'm sorry, kupo," it said. "I think I'm dead."

The mutant mog collapsed on the roof.

"It's just you and me now," I said, marching up to Miss Terious.

She snatched the knife out of Mr. Kupo's back, sticking it onto a staff she formed out of energy. "I can take you."

"I'd like to see you try." And I came at her with flying punches and kicks.

The trouble was, she had a weapon and I didn't. I had to duck her swings in order to slip in a punch, and quite a few times she would clobber me with the dull end of the staff, and I'd fall over on the roof.

I sent a bird swarm after her, but she only lowered her visor and shot some sticky gunk at the whole mess of them, trapping them on the ground. "How do you think I caught the ones before?" she said with a self satisfied grin.

With cartoon speeds equaling my own, she swept my feet out from under me with her staff.

This time I stayed down. She had me pinned by the throat.

Her staff twirled around, and she had the real knife poised at my throat, ready to end my life.

"You leave my king alone!" I heard a voice shout.

Looking over, I could see Cupcake approaching, armed with the nasty metal spear she'd been originally stabbed with.

"You?" Miss Terious said. "Back from the grave?"

She whirled her staff in challenge, careful to keep her foot pressed against my throat as she did so.

"We _have_ to do something about _that_!"

The two faced each other with their staffs, striking each other, blocking, neither one giving an inch.

I got up from the ground, and tried to help, but Miss Terious hit me with her staff, knocking me into a pylon.

"It was the crown," Miss Terious said to Cupcake. "Wasn't it?"

"Yes," Cupcake said, stopping another strike.

"If I beat you," Miss Terious said, swinging her staff. "The bird empire ends. I take your throne, and your people will have a great future in manufacturing. All of them!"

"And if I win," Cupcake said. "I will take your body to replace mine!"

The statement caused Miss Terious to miss a swing. "What are you using right now?"

Cupcake gave her a nasty smile. "Guess."

"Jessica?"

The bird shoved her spear through Miss Terious's stomach.

"No!" the Zorbatronian cried. "This can't be!"

"Oh, but it is!"

Miss Terious's visor snapped down over her face. "I will never surrender my body to you!"

She paused. "Okay, that sounded really bad, but you get the idea."

Miss Terious took a small glowing pill out of her cleavage, popped it into her mouth, and her whole body incinerated into ash.

"No!" Cupcake yelled. "You can't!"

But she could.

Cupcake started crying.

"C'mon," I said, putting my hand on her shoulder. "Let's go home."

The bird queen blushed, looking all excited. "You mean...?"

I cringed. "Uh, _I don't know_. Maybe. Let's just...go back to Cool World, and figure that out later."

Whiskers waddled up to me, glancing backward at the KCPL building.

"You think it's safe now?" I asked.

"I'm not certain of anything," he said. "The devices have absorbed a great deal of the spikes' power. Now that we have our villains out of the way, it should be no problem getting what remains of the spikes into safer hiding places."

I nodded. "I'll help in any way I can."

The jukebox in the sky, apparently aware of what had just happened, zipped away from the convention center in a hurry.

With the help of the birds, we searched all around the building where the missile had exploded, but didn't find the spikes anywhere, even when Whiskers used a device he'd specially designed to detect such things.

Satisfied that we'd given the area a thorough search and found nothing, we returned to the bank from which we'd come, my birds taking all the broken alien machinery back to Cool World.

The streets were crowded with people, police, and policemen on horseback. Cars were backed up for blocks, several cop cars contributing to the jam. Everyone was staring at us.

When we stepped through the shattered windows of the bank, a cop got on his bullhorn, yelling, "Hold it right there! Nobody make another move!"

I just looked at him with an expression that said, "Seriously?" and stepped into the lobby.

Cupcake caused her servants to bury the man in bird droppings a second later.

"Would you like to go out for sushi?" the other rat asked me as we marched through the hallway on the other side of the dimensional gate.

I frowned. "No."

But then, well, I guess I had some new hormones or something, for, after looking into his eyes, I suddenly changed my mind.

"I...suppose it wouldn't kill me..."

So there it is. The entire story of what brought me into this strange existence in an animated parallel universe.

Master Blaster still abducts musicians, but we kinda left that one alone because he always puts them back after a few weeks, and it really makes the music interesting.

Dane and her boyfriend are happily `enslaved' together on Master Blaster's ship. It turns out the first pregnancy test she did was incorrect, but now she's pregnant for real. And super excited.

Extra found a nice little girlfriend for himself, a fat green bird that kinda looks like Cocopetal from the _Mysterious Cities of Gold_ cartoon. They're happy together.

Okay, so the next Ninja Turtles book, or cartoon show, is going to be a little weird. Me and Master Splinter, we, um, _tied the knot_. Every day we go outside and do Tai Chi.

We rule as king and queen over the bird kingdom, and the turtles are our royal knights. Technically I'm an _empress_, because we're both Asiatic. Kind of. At any rate, it sounds cooler.

We have two sons, Chao and Mein. That was Splinter's idea.

Cupcake still has issues. She and Jessica have been sharing the same body for some time, and they've grown into each other, like the symbiote on Stargate or something. She's madly in love with Sneezer, which is cool because I can't seem to change out of my rat girl form.

She really turned the bird farms around. The storks can barely keep up with the amount of babies she's allowing to roll off the assembly line, but she's developed a system that makes it all work. She tells me it's like Amazon, but I'm not so sure if that's an adequate description.

After Jessica transformed into Cupcake, Chad failed to recognize her new self, and was terribly depressed. I'd go out with Splinter or something and see the guy nursing a milkshake at Hoofnagels. I hated to see him like that.

When I told Amanda about his predicament, she actually seemed interested, and came by to visit him.

Something between them must have worked out, because now they share the same apartment, and it seems they can't see enough of each other.

She hadn't told me this before, but they grew up together. Well, _adjacent to one another_. They ran into each other a few times when playing with _The Muppet Babies _and the _Get Along Gang_, and went to high school with Archie.

Amanda doesn't even care that he's a single dad. She loves caring for Isosceles. I'm happy for them.

Dad is back with Holli, and it seems like it's for good. He sent Chori Tart away, and now she's living with Mr. Sleezington. They run the army of half human doodles, which my army has to fight from time to time, in comic book fashion. Weird, huh?

Riffraff and Cleo settled down, ruling their own fiefdom in the Shadow Realm. Their car, it seems, was not only recovered and repaired, but somehow paid in full, though I'm not sure how they did it. Some wacky adventure as usual, I suppose.

Whiskers, well, that one's a little strange. He fell in love with that alligator from the sewer that kept following me around.

At first, it was like he had a pet.

And then, I saw them _kissing_.

It turns out that there was an actual green humanoid lady trapped beneath that overweight reptile body, and Whisker's kiss broke a magic spell, making their relationship a normal scientist plus superheroine thing. I'm glad, because it would have been disgusting otherwise.

We still haven't heard anything about the spikes. I think we won't be hearing from them anymore, at least, not for a very long time.

The portals to Cool World are all closed now, unless you happen to get captured by Master Blaster. But that requires _talent_. _If you're lucky_.

Talented or not, you can still catch our adventures in the newest issue of Cool World, coming to your local comic book store this summer.

That's all, folks.


	90. Chapter 90: Yamato

The story I'm telling you now is not as dramatic as the one you just read, but it still involves Cool World, and it is very important to me.

It involves what happened after Misty's defeat, me, Splinter, the Bird Empire, and Amanda.

It also involves the Howlers, Dane, and a shovel wielding bear with a park ranger's hat.

We were walking through the hallway of the Ewes Bank building. A white hallway with fake marble floor tiles. I had just agreed to go out for sushi with Master Splinter. As we were walking quietly along, I found a brown hand wrapping around my own.

The other rat smiled at me in a way I wasn't comfortable with.

I pushed his hand away.

He came to an abrupt stop. "_Drew San_, if you do not like me, then tell me plainly, and I will go. Otherwise, why do you recoil from me?"

"I..." I stammered.

I had to make a choice, and fast. I either had to get used to being..._admired_ by Sensei, or not hang out with him at all.

I couldn't not like Splinter. In fact, I remembered watching his show when I first came through puberty, and experiencing feelings about the rat I didn't know I had. Feelings I didn't want to admit, even to myself.

Blushing hotly, I took his hand in mine and squeezed it.

"_Better,_" he said.

He was a creature of few words, that Splinter. But that's what I liked about him.

Among other things.

"Master," Leonardo said. "Are we going to need to build an extra room in the sewer for _her_?"

Splinter glanced at me, raising an eyebrow.

"Uh..." I said.

"It is not necessary," he said to his student. "_We can share the same room._"

"We can?" I blurted.

He just smiled.

"Master Splinter," I said. "Don't get me wrong, I like you, but _you're moving a little too fast._"

Funny me asking such a thing from a speedy Kung Fu rodent.

Splinter laughed. "I am sorry. I have been alone too long. I have forgotten my manners."

"Also, I'm not too wild about sewers."

Extra fluttered between us. "Master is _king of the bird people!_" he said with pride. "Why should he sleep in a dirty sewer when he has a palace with a _luxury_ _nest?_"

"Uh, thank you, Extra," I said, turning the options over in my mind. "I had originally intended to just stay at Amanda's again, but..."

"I would like to see this _bird palace,_" Splinter said.

I shrugged. "No problem, sensei."

"_Yamato_," he insisted.

"Right. No problem, _Yamato._"

"Master," Extra said. "Are you going to _marry_ this rat?"

"Extra!" I cried. "I love you, buddy, but sometimes you need to back off and mind your own business."

His feathers turned a bit pink. "My apologies, master, but as ruler of the Bird Kingdom, your every act is of great importance to your royal subjects. The...spouse you choose to marry could have considerable impact on our people's future."

I rolled my eyes. "Are you saying I should marry someone you selected?"

"No master," he replied. "Master Splinter is very satisfactory...if you choose to have him as your husband..."

"You'll make a cute couple," Amanda said behind me. "Let me know when you decide to do it. I want to watch."

"Amanda!" I exclaimed in disgust.

"Don't act so surprised, Drew," she said. "Remember when I got out the popcorn for you and Sneezer?"

I cringed.

"I...would he honored," Splinter said with a smile.

I was now pretty much completely pink, my embarrassment visible for all to see, as is the custom of many cartoons. Splinter chuckled.

Cupcake, still in her bra, cape and diaper, strolled up beside me, taking my other hand.

"_My king," _she said with a smile. "I know you seem to be permanently female now, but that doesn't change the way I feel about you. We can still _have a good time_, if you get my meaning."

I swallowed. First Cleo, now her. What was wrong with these cartoon women?

Splinter chuckled more as he heard this. "_It appears I have found quite the treasure._"

Cupcake suddenly contradicted herself by going, "Eew!" and wiping her hand on her orange leg.

"Nice of you to join us, Jessica," Cupcake muttered.

"I feel like I'm in a body snatchers movie," she told herself. "When can I stick you back in your pod and shoot you into outer space?"

"When you have become a fair and just ruler," she answered.

"Can I watch too?" Sneezer asked me as he stepped in front.

"Would you rather watch, or _participate_?" Cupcake asked.

The mouse spun around quickly, staring at her. "_What do you mean by that?_"

Cupcake pointed to her chest, then slapped her diaper.

"What's...the catch?"

"You have to deal with _two of us._"

"A _threesome_, eh?" he said with a growing grin. "_I'm sure it won't kill me..._"

"How about a _foursome_? If I can get the king onboard...gross."

"If it's gross, why did you suggest it?"

"Sorry," Cupcake said. "It's the _other girl_, you know. It may take awhile for us to work up to that one, anyway. But both of us think you're scrumptious."

"A _bird_, thinks that I'm scrumptious?"

"Stranger things have happened...Do you mind that I wear diapers?"

Sneezer pulled up his loincloth, revealing that he wore one as well. "_Nope._"

"God," Jessica Cupcake muttered. "Seriously?"

"Don't act so disgusted, Jessica," Cupcake Cupcake said. "It was your idea in the first place."

Jessica Cupcake just groaned.

Hearing a sigh behind me, I looked back and saw Whiskers looking rather depressed. "Problem, boss?"

_"Oh, it's nothing._"

"It's Miss Terious, isn't it?" I asked.

Whiskers nodded sadly. "Indeed. Once more I am alone. She was my one true love. I had great hopes for her. I thought we had something together. If only she hadn't attempted to conquer the world!" he shook his head.

Amanda rubbed him on the head. "You'll find another. I'm sure _someone_ will show up eventually. You just got to keep your eyes open. _Just look at Drew!_"

Whiskers shuddered in disgust. "You're not helping."

"What I mean is, he pursued one woman, and _found me instead._"

"He also changed sexes."

Amanda shrugged. "I have that affect on people. Still, I think it wouldn't hurt to keep your eyes open."

He glanced at her as if momentarily considering her as a candidate, but then looked down. "I...suppose so...but not every woman enjoys a good book or a soccer game, or tea and scones, and knows how to do technical things..."

"Like hooking up cable TV?" I said in a half jest.

He stared at me. "I...suppose that _would_ be technical..."

I opened my mouth, then closed it again. "_Nah..._"

Whiskers looked hopeful. "Do you _know someone?_"

"Um...not really," I said.

"What do you mean, not really?"

"She's not really your type."

"How do you know what my type is?"

I sighed in frustration. "It's an alligator, okay? It lives in the _sewer._"

He frowned. "Oh."

"Wait," Cupcake said suddenly. "Where's Chad?"

"Not sure," I muttered.

Between where I was and the end of the hallway, at the plot hole, I couldn't see him or the baby.

"Chad?" Cupcake called.

No answer.

"I think he's still at Bartle Hall," I said.

For a moment, she looked glum, but then she suddenly laughed, clapping her hands.

A crow and a sparrow popped out of her bra, giving her a salute.

She whispered something to them, and a second later the hallway filled with a cloud of flapping wings.

When the feathers cleared, Chad was standing before her, looking disoriented. "Cupcake! Where's Jessica?"

"Chad," she said softly. "_I'm here._"

"I know _you're_ here, Cupcake, but what happened to Jessica?"

Cupcake pointed to her chest. "She's in here. Cupcake took over her body, and changed it to _this_. But your girlfriend is still in here."

Chad frowned. "Nice try, Cupcake."

"You don't believe us?"

He shook his head. "Perhaps if you turned into Jessica."

I saw tears rolling down Cupcake's beak. "I...can't do that."

"As I said, _nice try._"

Cupcake started crying. It sounded like chirping. "I am the mother of your child!"

"No you're not. You're the baby farm woman."

"You didn't see me transform?"

"No I did not."

Cupcake rushed up to him, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him. "It's me, you dumb kangaroo! Jessica! I'm in here!"

"Jessica doesn't wear diapers," she said. "_It wasn't my idea,_" she growled through her beak. "_Mostly._ It's me! Cupcake, I mean _Jessica!_ Jessica!"

Chad just frowned at her.

"Wait," she blurted. "At least let me take care of Isosceles, _until she returns._"

He shook his head violently. "I am sorry. I am not comfortable with that. I will care for him myself, until she comes back."

"You idiot," she whispered. "I should have known."

She dropped to her knees and sobbed.

"Please don't do that," Chad said. "I don't like cry babies. I already have one in my carrier."

On cue, Isosceles also started crying. The kangaroo hurried away from the bird.

"That's not fair!" Cupcake moaned. "You stupid bird! You ruined everything!"

"Now now," she answered herself. "Keep it up and I'll put you back in the unicorn."

"It's my body!"

"I know. You'll get it back once you show yourself to be an honorable queen."

"After Chad finds another woman," she muttered.

"_Perhaps._ This wouldn't have happened if you hadn't tried to conquer the world."

"Stupid bird brain. I hate you."

"How do you think I felt when you practically destroyed my baby factory?"

"You helped kill Misty. I hope you have a plan for all those so called aborted babies."

"Now that we have a king, and your memories, I'm sure, between us, we can handle both operations."

Cupcake marched up to me, giving me a little bow. "My king."

"Your..._highness_," I stammered.

She screamed and scampered off down an adjoining hallway.

Sheep had remade the front of the building in ink and paint. I don't know where the real money went to, but it wasn't to that. I guess it shouldn't surprise me. The interest banks take out of your checking for minimum balance don't necessarily translate into quality service, or anything else you think it will go to.

I stepped toward that lobby, but Splinter pulled me back. "That way is to _Las Vegas_."

I frowned. "Oh."

That got me thinking.

I'd never work at my old job again.

That apartment...gone.

Bank account...forget it.

Family reunions? I don't think so.

That old me was gone forever.

"You...look unhappy," Splinter said.

"...Nothing," I answered. "It's nothing."

"Good job, _Bird King_," Riffraff said as he passed me.

"You weren't so bad yourself," I said.

I glanced at Cleo. "_Both of you._"

His wife winked at me. I quickly looked away.

The cats marched out the west entrance.

Mr. Guillotte was watching us as we passed through the hallway. He...seemed to recognize me.

"Weren't you in the Legal Action Matrix?" he asked.

"No," I said.

"Wait, no," he said. "I got it. You were the genius who disappeared after that one training class. You know, we could still use some help. If you wanted to go through training again..."

"I'll...think about it," I said. "This place kind of damaged my work ethic."

"_Tell me about it,_" he said with a roll of his eyes. "That, and my appetite."

I kept going.

It was daytime, around noon, I believe, though it felt much later than that.

In our absence, April O' Neal had parked the Turtlemobile outside the side entrance. When she saw Splinter and I walking hand in hand to her door, she laughed.

"What!" I snapped indignantly.

"Nothing," she said with a grin. "It's cute. I'm happy for you. Maybe now he'll stop lurking around my shower."

Splinter cleared his throat. "_I bring her towels._"

Suddenly feeling uncomfortable, I relaxed my grip on his paw.

"You must teach me to be better," he said in an apologetic tone. "You must be my _love sensei._"

"Anything else I should be warned about?" I asked the woman.

"He's lactose intolerant. You should get him something before he starts chowing down on pizza."

"Bad habit from my sons," he said. "Rice is much healthier."

April opened her mouth to say something else.

"Please," I groaned. "I think I've heard enough."

Splinter took my hand. I didn't resist.

A ride in the Shellraiser or whatever is not exactly as romantic as a limo, but in Cool World, stuff like that tends to be kind of cheesy anyway. Honestly, a ride in a grungy van filled with turtles and weaponry made me feel more special, like `one of the guys.'

Okay, that sounded bad, but it's pretty accurate.

We sat on padded benches. Only April and Leonardo got seats, because they were up front.

Amanda came along...to watch.

Sneezer and Cupcake came along too. Same reason.

I half expected Riffraff to join us, but_ they had run off somewhere_. Thankfully, this was the end of my spectator list...well, except for the birds.

As the wagon drove along, the bird started crying again. "How can he be so stupid? He _knows_ it's me! Why can't he see it?"

"I don't know," Amanda said.

"Nobody can tell that Clark Kent is really Superman with glasses," I suggested.

Donatello stared at me. "You're saying the reporter for the Daily Planet is Superman?"

Michelangelo shook his head. "That's ridiculous. _That dork?_ A superhero?"

"He can't take care of a baby on his own! He's a _man_! A baby needs his _mother!_"

Amanda sighed. "I wish I could help."

A lightbulb popped on above Cupcake's head. "Maybe you can, sweetie. Maybe you can. You want to be my delivery gal?"

She shrugged. "How much you paying?"

Cupcake twisted her beak. "Honey, I'm the Bird Queen. I'll make it worth your while."

"_I'll think about it._" Amanda turned her attention to me. "_Drew..._Since you _are_ female, _and_ living here long term...you think you might try out the Halftone Club?"

"I _did_ try it," I said.

"I mean, as an _employee._"

"Um, _no,_" I said.

"You're right," she sighed. "You're the Bird King, or Queen...you think you'd feel differently about it if you weren't?"

"Not really. You see, there's a _bank._"

She looked disappointed.

I glanced at my new boyfriend. "So. Splinter. You like _birds_, don't you?"

He nodded. "When no one is watching, I like to go outside with my binoculars and watch them. They are very beautiful."

I cringed a little at the thought of Splinter with binoculars, but didn't ask what else he did with them.

"When I heard about what you did at C.C. Knickknocker, I was pleased. I was not aware that such cruelty was happening."

"_So you could have helped_," I muttered.

"You did not ask."

"Well, _after that beating you gave me, when I fell on your pizza..._"

"It is _understandable_. But you did not need my help, it seems. You _impressed_ me."

Extra's brothers landed on the other rat's shoulders, nuzzling against his neck. He smiled pleasantly about this. I found myself liking him even more.

"Sensei," Leonardo said. "About this date...Look, it's great that you found someone, and want to go out, but we've spent most our life living in the shadows and wearing disguises...you know, so people don't recognize us...and arrest us, or put us on the news, or alert Shredder to our presence..."

"It is...time to stop hiding," Splinter said.

"Thank God!" April muttered. "I _hate_ sewers."

All four turtles glared at her.

"No offense, but you guys can do better."

"So...you're not afraid of...the police, or our enemies finding us," Leonardo said, dismayed.

"We have...defeated many such things in the past."

"I _know_. But what happens if they come at us _all at once?_"

Splinter put his paw on the front passenger seat. "Leonardo, my son. Last Saturday, did you or did you not catch a fly with chopsticks?"

"Um...I did," he muttered.

"Leonardo. Man or turtle who catches fly with chopsticks can do _anything._"

"Drew and I have an army of birds," Cupcake added.

Leonardo fell silent, staring at her.

Sneezer, in the meantime, lay pressed up against the bird's body, running his paw down her side, her legs, her diaper. Cupcake slapped his paw away.

"Sneezer, honey, don't do that."

"You don't like it?" he said with a disappointed pout.

"_I wouldn't say that_," she said. "It's, um, you know. I already have a boyfriend."

"But he doesn't know you're in there!" Sneezer protested.

"Something might change. Shut up, Cupcake."

His paw was on her thigh again. She grabbed it. "So, let's work on _boundaries_ for the time being, shall we? Keep your grubby paws to yourself."

"They're not _that_ grubby, are they? I _washed_ them..."

Cupcake shook her head and smirked a little.

"Admit it. You _like_ me touching you."

The bird squirmed on her bench. "It's very distracting, and I'm not sure if it's the Cupcake part of me that likes it."

"It's _Jessica_," he said. "Cupcake only has the hots for _Drew._"

"So I'm just supposed to hop in the sack with you."

_"Yeah._"

"You must think I'm just some weak minded _floozy_, some shallow _bimbo_ who never commits, and sleeps with whatever random guy she happens to be with!"

"..._Maybe?_"

She glared at him, but then had this expression on her face like she had just lowered her standards.

"No," she said at last. "_I couldn't._"

"_You're not Jessica anymore_," Sneezer said. "_No one will know._"

"_I'll_ know," Cupcake answered.

The mouse waggled his eyebrows at her. "_So will I._"

Cupcake opened the slot the turtles used to fire their net gun through, dunking the mouse through the hole.

She slid it shut, giving me a cheesy grin.

"So..." she said. "Still not happy about you thwarting my attempt at world conquest, and ruining my life."

"I'd say I was worry," I said. "If I was."

"It is okay, my king," she contradicted herself. "It is her fault for attempting to conquer the world to begin with."

I just stared at her in silence.

"Anyways, don't mind her. She's just mad because she learned the hard way that crime does not pay."

"Honestly," I said. "I wouldn't call global domination a crime. It's war, and evil, but technically not a crime."

The bird smirked. "Jessica likes that."

The restaurant was stereotypically Asian. Giant brass dragons, a front entrance that looked like a Japanese torii, gold painted vertical sign boards saying something I couldn't read in Chinese.

When I and Splinter stepped out, the turtles stayed in the wagon, looking rather uncomfortable.

Following me through the entrance were Amanda, Cupcake and Extra.

The interior was another cliche. More brass dragons, a jolly fat guy statue, Chinese brush paintings. Canned Chinese music. The place was run by ethnic stereotypes.

One such stereotype, a young man in Mandarin clothes, with a braided ponytail, stood at the check-in desk.

I guess, to be honest, I was technically dating a racial stereotype, but he was at least a cool stereotype.

The man looked past me to my sister. "How many?"

Amanda nodded back to me. "Two," I said.

The man looked down and frowned. "We don't serve rat."

"Great," I said. "Because that would be _cannibalism._"

The man stared at me in dismay. I'd just deflated his whle joke.

"Right this way," he said, leading me and my date into the restaurant.

I glanced back and saw Amanda talking t a girl with a red-gold kimono and chopsticks in her hair.

"Oh no," she was saying. "We're not eating. We just want to watch."

"I'm sorry," the girl said. "This is a restaurant."

"Fine," she sighed. "Table for two, maybe three if you count the little bird."

And then Sneezer popped up next to her.

"Make that four."

I was led to a low table with no seats, one of those traditional things where you kneel at the table.

"This is rare," I muttered. "Well, not rare for a cartoon..."

To my chagrin, I discovered Riffraff and Cleo had a booth nearby. I could already guess the conversation we would be having. "Oh, I just decided to take the wife out for sushi. I had _no idea_ you'd be here. We are _totally_ not spying on you."

I rolled my eyes, pretending they weren't there.

I ordered sushi, and Splinter ordered sake. Amazing Chan didn't ask me what kind of sushi I wanted. Maybe their selection wasn't that good or something.

The food was brought out with cartoon speed, but I ate slowly, gazing into Splinter's eyes, not so much out of love as trying to figure out what I saw in him.

As he gazed back, I saw hearts popping out of his robe. He grabbed them with chopsticks and swallowed them, which made me chuckle a little...as I tried to ignore my own...and stares from Amanda's table.

I thought I saw Leonardo peering through the window, then April, but they vanished when I looked that way.

"So, uh, _Yamato_..." I said. "Your..._sons_ go on a lot of missions without you..._I've heard_. What do you do with all that time by yourself? Um...besides kung fu."

"I have a nice garden of bonsai trees," he said. "Donatello has made me a nice generator for the plant lights."

"That's cool," Is aid.

Why am I dating Splinter? I asked myself. Was he just a _project_ to work on? How did this childhood obsession turn into romance? The answer eluded me.

Does anyone understand why they fall in love? I kind of doubted it.

"I understand you only had one woman in your life."

"Hai," he said. "It was a long time ago. After I turned into _this_, she did not recognize me."

Maybe I felt sorry for him. Was that what it was?

"She sounds a little.._.closed minded._"

He smiled a little. "Perhaps you are right. I'm glad you are not."

Hearing a chirp, I turned my head and saw a sparrow flap down on a little set of carpeted steps nearby with a wooden letter K in its beak.

With some annoyance, I just froze there, waiting for more letters.

Six more birds brought in blocks.

KISS HIM, the letters said. One of the S's was backwards, but a bird fluttered down, fixing the error.

"Seriously?" I groaned.

On a whim, I waved at the wooden letters, as if to somehow telekinetically scatter them.

To my surprise, the birds lost control of themselves and flew into the letters, doing just that. I grinned a little.

Splinter chuckled, making me blush.

Master Splinter didn't have that much to teach me, I thought. I know too much about him.

...Or do I?

"Can you read and write Chinese?" I asked. "Or Japanese?"

He nodded. "Hai."

"Okay..." I pointed to a brush painting of fish, with calligraphic writing along the side. "What does that say?"

He squinted at it. "It says...`I am tired of making this shitty kitsch for Americans.' Kitsch is an approximation of what that word means."

"_I see_," I said with a smirk. "What's the one next to it say?"

"`Mountainscape near Fuji.'"

"Seriously?"

"Yes. It was painted by someone else."

He was a rat. He wasn't Sneezer, and he knew kung fu. Was that why little hearts were popping out of my clothes? Or was it just his body?

"Splinter," I said. "Um, remember when I fell through the ceiling of your place and ruined your pizza, and you and your sons kissed my ass?"

He frowned. "That...sounds _interesting_. You would think I would remember something like that."

"_Kicked,_" I said. "I got _beat up_. Ring any bells? I was _human_. A _male_ human."

He twisted his lip. "You have already mentioned this to me once before. The answer is yes. You learned your lesson, did you not? Do not lay on people's food."

I reddened, surprised at how distracted I was getting. "Uh, yeah."

Maybe that's why I..._liked_ him so much. He didn't care what I used to be or anything. He _liked_ me just as I am. Unconditionally.

After another sushi tray was brought out, wherein we stared at each other again, I heard someone singing a tune from _Little Mermaid_, with altered lyrics.

"Shannanananana, don't be shy! _You want to kiss sensei..._"

It was my little feathered friend. I shot him an irritated glare. "Could you please not do that?"

A second later, Splinter leans over the table to kiss me.

_Well..._

Ahem.

To be honest, I can't say I was _entirely displeased..._

In fact, I might have kissed back a little enthusiastically.

I stopped when I heard applause, pulling away from him.

Splinter was grinning. I tried not to, but was still kinda smirking.

"You should not be afraid to have an audience," he said. "You are..._royalty._"

"I...I've never been royalty before," I whispered. "This is really awkward. I'm used to being a nobody tax guy. Plus, these guys are perverted."

I glanced up at Sneezer. He looked a little glum, like he was going to cry and run out of the restaurant, but then Cupcake started whispering in his ear. He blushed, his Adam's apple bobbing.

Was I with Splinter just to avoid him?

'You're thinking about _him_?" Splinter asked.

Cupcake and Sneezer started kissing. I looked away, shaking my head violently. ".._.No_. He _needs to go somewhere._"

Amanda gave me a thumbs up.

Splinter passed me a little jar. "You have not touched your sake."

I was a little afraid of being drunk around Splinter. I didn't want to say anything awkward, or make a big mistake. Still, I drank a little anyway.

The stuff tasted like milk. I wasn't too surprised at this. I was at least glad it didn't taste like rice scum.

"You know," I said. "Maybe you could show me around your place. I've never had a really good look at your subterranean lair."

"It would be a _pleasure_," he said with a smile.

Just as long as you don't show me straight to the bedroom, I thought.

It seemed _Amanda_ and _Cupcake _had paid for everything, including tips. This I learned when we were leaving.

Splinter had one of those Turtle Phones, you know, the shell that opens to show you a video screen. He asked Leonardo to bring the van around, and it showed up a few seconds later.

Sneezer, to my surprise, was not paying attention to me. Instead he and Cupcake kept kissing, the mouse pawing all over her. It was a little strange because he was shorter than her, but they made it work.

Soon she whispered something in his hear, and she was flying him off in the air somewhere.

"So what next?" Amanda said.

"I thought you were eavesdropping," I said.

"Well..."

I told her about touring the sewer.

She rolled her eyes. "Tell me when you're about to have sex."

"No," I said. "I definitely won't be telling you that."

"I'm your _sister_," she said.

"_I know._ A good sister would give me some _space._"

She looked hurt.

I opened my mouth to say something, but Extra darted out of my clothes and whispered in her ear.

She giggled and rubbed his head. "Thank you."

"Is he going to tell us?" Riffraff asked.

"I mean, _she?_"

Amanda muttered in his ear.

"Oh! All right."

He in turn told Cleo.

Since they didn't have a car anymore, the two walked away. Amanda asked them what they were doing, and when they said shopping, she joined them on their walk.

That left me alone with Splinter and his gang.

The tour of Splinter's lair was interesting. I got to see all sorts of neat stuff, the training room, the garage, complete with helicopters, boat and submarine (it makes no logical sense in terms of city planning or architecture), the den, the bonsai garden, a basketball court, and the turtles' individual rooms.

"This room belongs to Donatello," he said as he showed me a chamber full of strange gadgets, probably for closing dimensional portholes and tracking robots while simultaneously cooking pizza. "I would not touch anything. The last time I flipped a switch on a toaster, I ended up in the Shadow Realm."

"Popular place," I remarked. "Where does he get all his materials from?"

"He...takes things from junk yards."

"That's kinda illegal, isn't it?"

"It is not illegal to steal trash. It is _public domain._"

I shook my head. "_Okay..."_

The turtles were in the den, eating pizza and watching an old black and white horror movie. I asked them if they'd ever seen newer ones, like _Elm Street_ or _Saw_, but they said no.

"So, I've always wondered, how do you guys get the money to pay for your pizzas? Or do you just steal them all the time?"

Splinter sighed. "Sadly, my sons have turned to minor crime. They only steal out of necessity. April and the others have helped us pay for things. Also, sometimes pizza delivery men have make deals with us. Do you judge us for this? The theft?"

"Um, no," I said. "I...imagine it's hard for a giant talking animal to find work."

"I have made efforts to make us self sustaining, but my sons do not like it. Here. I will show you."

Splinter had a miniature farm. He was growing rice and mushrooms and some other things, mirrors and fluorescents giving the plants light. The water, of course, was easily accessible.

At the end of this little farm, I saw a small bedroom.

"And this is where I-"

I held up a paw to stop him. "I'm sure it's lovely. This has been..._nice_. Look, how about I show you my _palace?_"

He chuckled. "We have only just arrived. My sons may not wish to go driving again."

"It's not like you're saving the world or anything," I said.

Extra popped out of my kimono. "Master, I will gladly summon transportation for you and your boyfriend. In fact, you are wanted at the Bird Palace."

I nodded.

"You've never been to the bird palace before, have you, sensei?"

"I...have not. Please-"

"Sorry. _Yamato._"

I took his hand. "C'mon. Let's go."

Extra flapped in front of my face. "Master, it would be more convenient if you came to the surface first."

I glanced at sensei.

"I will show you," he said.

As he was leading me down a tunnel, I suddenly caught sight of Whiskers, riding on the back of the..._friendly alligator_. He was eating a scone, relaxing on her spiny back like it were a couch.

When he saw me, he casually took another bite and waved to me like he wasn't doing anything unusual. He rode off into a nearby tunnel.

Having already told the turtles what he was doing, Splinter led me up a ladder to the surface. Extra chirped a few times, and a giant swarm of birds swooped down and carried us into the sky, over the city, to the giant ball of twigs the birds called a palace.

Trumpets announced our presence the moment we flew through the gates. Thousands of birds bowed their faces almost to the ground as we touched down and walked into the main chamber.

We marched ahead, and as we did, I heard the trumpeters, and _birds with trumpeting beaks_, doing the Star Wars coronation theme.

When we reached the end of the room, I froze, staring in shock at what I saw.

Four wooden thrones had been set up on the royal dais, two elevated, two on either side, on a slightly lower level. All empty.

"What's this?" I cried.

"Master," Extra said in my ear. "I think you know."

I swallowed. "One of those is for _me_?"

"Yes, and one for Splinter, if you so choose."

I took a deep breath. "So who are the other two for?"

Extra didn't answer.

For a moment, we just stood there, staring.

"What now?" Splinter asked.

"I don't know," I said. "Make ourselves at home, I guess."

As I was walking around these strange thrones, I suddenly heard moans and giggling. The noises appeared to come from the door behind the throne.

Rolling my eyes, I asked Extra to get his bird friends to open the floor hatch, so we could go downstairs.

Instead of doing that, he pecked at the door.

A moment later, I heard the sound of a crossbrace being slid back, and Cupcake stepped out the door, hitching her diaper up as she walked. Sneezer followed close behind, looking suspicious.

She nodded to me. "_My king._"

"Um, Cupcake?" I said. "About that. I'm having difficulty...figuring out...how this ruling thing will work." I would have said `our relationships', but that would have sounded bad. "Could you explain these thrones?"

She chuckled a little. "Certainly."

She climbed the dais, seating herself in one throne, patting the one next to me. "This one, of course, is _yours._"

"And...the other ones?"

"Those are for the royal _concubines_, or, I guess, _husbands_, in this case."

She pointed to the one on her left. "That one is Chad, I mean, Sneezer's..."

Splinter smiled and seated himself in the other one.

He must have noticed me turn scarlet, for then he blurted, "I am sorry. I was tired."

"No, no, you're _fine_," Cupcake said. "Now, we just have a few things to go over, _to make it official._" She clapped her hands, and the birds opened the floor panel, and we went down into the royal dining room.

I and Splinter took seats at the head of this table, Cupcake and Sneezer adjacent. The other spots were occupied by rather official looking birds, including the feathery sorceress from _He-Man_, Scrooge McDuck and his assistant guy that turns into a robot, the snooty toucan from _The Lion King_, the owl with glowing eyes from _Rats of NIMH_, the argyle clad owl from _Animal Crossing_, currently asleep, a dark and brooding owl from _Legend of the Guardians_, and one of those red robed creatures from the junkyard, a bird, of course.

Other birds flocked around our table, on the floor, listening in.

Cupcake twisted the tail of a red tailed hawk, and it shrieked out loudly enough to get everyone's attention.

"_Ahem_," Cupcake said. "I call the Council of Birds to session. It has been a hard and difficult rule, but I believe I have found someone, a _partner_, to share the burden, if she doesn't object."

"None whatsoever," I said. "As long as this is a purely political arrangement."

The Council stared at us.

"_That's negotiable_," Cupcake said quickly.

I cringed, but decided to say nothing.

"Is the candidate committed to rule the bird kingdom as long as she lives?" asked Mufasa's toucan.

The permanence frightened me. I momentarily couldn't speak. I got stares.

"_Well,_" I stammered. "I don't have anything else to do with my life." I sighed. "_Yes._ I commit."

Scrooge's adviser whispered in his ear.

"How is this candidate on finances?" McDuck asked.

Cupcake smiled. "Quite exceptional. He used to be a tax man."

Scrooge rubbed his beak thoughtfully.

"Does she smoke or use drugs?" the sorceress asked.

"No," Cupcake said.

"Is she a good friend? Does she always look for the good in others? Does she enjoy reading?"

"I assure you, Sorceress, that Drew has many desirable heroic qualities."

"I agree," said Splinter. "I do not see drew as the type who joins with the forces of evil."

"He's a pussy," Cupcake muttered, but then she slapped herself, apologizing to everyone.

"Is she wise?" asked the NIMH owl.

Cupcake frowned, looking like her beak had stopped working. "Jessica doesn't want to comment on this subject."

"I admit I'm not the wisest..." I said.

Cupcake started laughing.

"Stop it, you!" she hissed to herself.

"...But I'm _capable_, I _know stuff_, and I have you guys' well being at heart."

"What do you know about..._fossils_?" Mr. Argyle said groggily.

I groaned. "A little."

"You're the perfect pick," Cupcake said. "You're a total bird brain." And then she smacked herself. "_And so am I, apparently._"

"She saved us from enslavement," Extra said. "And fought valiantly alongside our army against Miss Terious at the convention center. Surely we need no other reasons to crown her."

"I disagree," said Mufasa's bird. "I'm not getting a sense of commitment here. What's more, he spurned the queen's affections, attacked several birds, then banished the queen to the Shadow Realm!"

"I've forgiven her," Cupcake said. "I've had much time to..._think_ about such things."

The toucan frowned. "Those he attacked are not so forgiving."

"I've _spoken_ to them," Cupcake said. "It was a misunderstanding. I was being too forward. They will be compensated."

"You're technically not king and queen. It's more like queen and queen. It's highly irregular."

"It's 2016," Cupcake said. "I believe my subjects are open minded enough for a new kind of rule."

Despite how lame the argument was, there were reluctant murmurs of agreement.

"How about this?" I said. "I was turned into a bird, and forced to carve Mr. Peanut out of a tree with my beak, so I know how your enslavement feels, firsthand...or _wing_."

The birds muttered loudly amongst themselves.

"Master Drew brought me back to life," Extra said. "_He sheds tears over birds._"

The room fell silent. I got stared at.

"I...like birds a lot," I said with a smile.

After an even longer silence, the NIMH owl announced, "I would like to raise a vote."

"Do we have a second on the suggestion?" Cupcake said.

The museum owl raised his wing, followed by Scrooge.

"Very well. We will hold the election by the ancient traditions of Gahoolie."

All of a sudden, the birds around the table appeared to be coughing up hairballs. NIMH owl hacks a few times, and a black pebble lands on the table, wet with saliva.

"One for," Cupcake muttered.

The museum owl regurgitated his own. Black.

"Two in favor."

Okay, so the regurgitating owls made sense, but now I saw the toucan gagging, and the red robed bird...and, weirdest of all, Sorceress.

They all voted in favor, even the toucan. I guess he had a change of heart.

...Well, ninety nine percent of them, at least. One of the owls spat up a Batarang, and the theme song to Batman started playing.

"So we are agreed," Cupcake said. "Drew is the new king."

"Not...exactly, my queen," the NIMH owl said. "We have decided upon a _restructuring..._"

"What!" Cupcake cried.

"We have decided to make Splinter and Drew into the new king and queen, to allow you to devote your full energies to the baby farms."

"But..." she stammered. "You can't do that! I'm the _queen!_"

"It's a two thirds majority vote. You will always be our queen, majesty. Your rule remains absolute, but the throne will now belong to the king and his consort. Drew has shown strength in defending the interests of all birdkind. You, highness, are unparalleled in the management of the baby farms."

"That's sexist!" Cupcake cried. "I am the monarch of all birds!"

"It is not sexist. Drew is female. Additionally, you appeared powerless to stop the cruelty of Miss Terious. We need a strong monarch to defend our people from future incidents." The toucan leaned forward. "Do we have the turtles onboard for this?"

Splinter took a deep breath. "I do not believe they will object."

"Wait," I blurted. "I, uh, we're just _dating_. This sounds..._permanent._"

"Drew," Cupcake said. "I think your friend can help us, even if you decide not to go steady."

I blushed.

"Though it would help to continue the royal line..."

"I have a question," Splinter said. "Must we be king and queen, or can we be emperor and empress instead?"

I heard a chorus of delighted oohs.

"I see no problem with a minor change of terminology," the toucan said. "We wish to be as culturally accommodating as possible."

The others nodded.

"Oh brother," said Cupcake.

"We must begin the coronation immediately," said NIMH owl. "Too long has the throne been left unoccupied."

"It's only been a few days," I said.

"It's been longer than that. First came our queen's long absence in the Shadow Realm, then came the war against Flo and Miss Terious..."

"Prepare these two with the finest of royal outfits," said the toucan.

"You sound like TV's Benson," I said.

"I refuse to comment on that."

I was suddenly whisked away, into a small nest-like dressing room, by a cloud of birds, who stripped me naked and put me in a fine silk Chinese outfit with a fat waist sash and ornate bird prints all over it. My hair was pulled back in a bun with golden rods stuck into it. They, uh, had dressed me in some _other silk things_, but I wasn't sure I wanted to put them on display...for anyone, at the moment, at least.

They were _designed_ for display, which made this whole thing rather awkward and embarrassing.

Before I could think about it too much, I was half pushed, half tugged out of the `changing nest', back up to the main entrance...where Mendelssohn's bridal suite was being performed.

Oh God, I thought.

It got worse.

Someone had apparently sent out invites.

Everyone was there. Dad, Holli, Amanda, the Cat-Illac Cats, Sneezer, Whiskers, the alligator, Dane, her boyfriend, the floating Spacely guy from the flying jukebox, hell, even Jessica's boyfriend, the kangaroo eyepatch guy, was there with his baby.

"Let me guess," I muttered to Extra. "A little bird told them."

"Actually, Master," he said, blushing pink. "_I_ told them."


	91. Chapter 91: Empress Drew

Sarah and Pete from Ewes Bank were there, as well as the green blackjack dealer bear and his exotic dancer girlfriend Becky (somehow they were never fixed), the Vlassic Pickle guy and storks with yarmulkes.

The minister, of course, was a _cardinal_. The red bird was shorter than us, so it perched on the podium. It was cute. It kind of made marrying a cheesy rat sensei a little more..._romantic_, if that's the right word for it.

The cardinal chirped out a long wedding speech to me and the audience, which had all the vocal tones and inflections of every wedding speech I had ever heard, making it completely understandable to anyone who was listening, even if there hadn't been a secretary bird giving explanations (it wasn't Cupcake, surprisingly enough).

The cardinal turned toward me, chirping that line about sickness, health, and death do us part. Again, only birds and bird brains could understand that.

I looked at Master Splinter, blushing as he stared back.

Swallowing, I chirped, "I guess."

The bird gave me this look that said, "You can do better than that."

I looked into the rat's eyes, swallowing hard.

"We can't do this, Splinter!" I whispered. "I don't even know why I'm attracted to you or if I love you like that!"

"I have heard that love does not come from thinking or understanding," he said in his typical Kung-Fu old guy voice. "Love comes to you by _doing!_"

A bunch of Valentine hearts burst out of my fancy kimono. "Oh Splinter..."

The cardinal gave me this expression that said, "You're getting cold feet _now_?"

"Chirp chirp," I answered, though I was more than a little horrified to make such a deep commitment to a childhood...okay, so maybe I was a little okay with it.

The bird turned toward Splinter, and he was asking the question in English, with a voice that sounded like Tom Bosley's.

"Hai," Splinter replied.

The cardinal then gave the same sounds one would expect after both parties said I do.

We kissed, then Cupcake and a team of birds led us to the palace entrance, outside its gates, where a small yacht stood suspended in midair by a group of giant swans.

"What's all this?" I asked Cupcake.

"For your honeymoon," she said. "I've arranged you a vacation in a little place called Valinor. They have a wonderful bed and breakfast."

I blushed deeply. "Uh, thank you, I guess."

_"You seem to be saying I guess a lot_," she said.

_"I will fix that,"_ Splinter said confidently.

"I'm sure you will!" she giggled. "Have fun, you two!"

And then, in a conspiratorial whisper, "Don't get too wild on that cabin bed. _Swans can be easily distracted. _ They might drop you."

"No, no," said one of the swans. "I promise we'll set them down before we start watching."

I shuddered.

I and my new husband climbed the gangplank, boarding the ship.

We didn't "get wild" at all, but rather just sat on the deck, drinking champagne and watching the scenery.

Valinor, it seemed, was across and ocean, and it took awhile. Either that, or the birds were flying us in circles until the stars came out, making it that much more romantic.

There _was_ a fireworks show. _Two_, in fact,, one behind us at the bird palace, and one coming from an island straight ahead. The fireworks made the shapes of hearts and rings and ninja Chinese symbols and weapons.

The boat touched down along an elegant stone jetty. We disembarked, and a flock of doves led us into the city.

Valinor was like a Paris for birds. All around us I saw bird statues and fountains and buildings that looked like bird houses. Bird bakeries filled the air with various delicious smells.

We arrived at the bed and breakfast, which wasn't like any bed and breakfast I expected, but more like a giant hotel.

Its gate was framed by giant swans made of pearl, with golden beaks and diamonds for eyes, the building itself featuring bird statues on every balcony and rooftop. The interior looked exactly like an Omni Hotel, staffed by birds.

We took an elevator to a suite on the very top floor, a floor which was, by itself, just one ridiculously big suite.

A `living room' stood near the elevator, a massive palatial dining room stood in an adjacent area, there was a jacuzzi, a sauna, a massage parlor, and a bedroom that resembled a belfry with padded walls, pitted with mirrors, beds and bondage stuff at regular intervals all the way up. Cupcake, unsurprisingly, liked to get a little freaky.

The bed on the `ground level' was a nest of solid oak weave, padded all the way around, and full of feather pillows. Master Splinter grunted in approval.

I didn't want this, but yet I did.

"Master Splinter!" I cried as he undid my sash.

"Our skills are evenly matched," he purred. "If you do not want this, you may throw me through a wall."

_"Master Splinter!_" I breathed.

His muzzle came close, and he started kissing me.

I pushed him back, and we stared at each other for a moment.

"My apologies for my..._lack of restraint_," the rat said. "It has been a long time."

My emotions were too confused. I couldn't think of anything to say.

He slid a paw around my waist. "You must tell me if I am making you uncomfortable."

I grabbed him around the neck, kissing him passionately.

Our paws slid into each other's Mandarin outfits, peeling them away from our bodies. Neither one of us had anything on underneath.

"Uh...sensei?"

"It's Yamato," he said.

"Sorry. Yamato. Don't you think we should, I don't know, use some protection?"

"You and I are strong martial artists. We will _protect each other!_"

I groaned. "Okay, fine. I always wanted to know what motherhood feels like."

Then I paused. "No. Wait. That's right. I signed away my child bearing rights."

I swallowed, suddenly feeling guilty.

When he didn't understand, I explained the paper I signed with Cupcake.

"It is okay," Splinter said. "I still love you."

He took me in his arms and kissed me.

"This isn't something I've ever done before," I said between kisses. "I mean, sleeping with a guy. I really never thought it would be something I'd do."

"You are _female_," he said. "And I am _male_. Let your _body_ tell you what to do."

That simple. Like he were telling me a Kung Fu move.

"That's not what I'm afraid of," I said.

"Afraid that you'll lose control?"

I shook my head. "No. Afraid that I'll like it."

I saw his muzzle curl into a smile. _"I'm afraid I'll like it too."_

I closed my eyes and kissed him, my paws roving around his chest. I never pictured him having much muscle there, but his pecs were pretty firm.

His paws slid around my hips, tracing the curve of my buttocks. I decided I didn't mind. Especially when I got to touch his.

Splinter bumped into the nest, _my nest_, and I gave him a shove.

It didn't work as I planned. Being a ninja master, he used my momentum to throw me onto the mattress, and he was on top. Sexy mistake?

My bare breasts tingled as his body pressed against me. As a doodle, I thought I wasn't supposed to feel things, but maybe something got rewritten, or maybe it was the fact I was part human, somewhere.

"Be gentle," I whimpered. "It's my first time as a woman."

He chuckled softly. "We shall do it..._Tai Chi style."_

He rolled me over on top of him. "Perhaps this will help?"

"Better," I said with a slight smile. We both laughed.

The next part wasn't so funny. I kinda lost all self respect and did what felt good to me.

Let's just say I enjoyed it on his `like meter' a lot more than I thought I would. It goes without saying that he liked _me_.

I let out high pitched girly moans as I rode up and down on Splinter's lap, the sensei responding with sounds like a lazy guard dog growling half heartedly at a burglar.

"Sensei," I said in a shuddering gasp. "Do me a favor. Please don't say `cowabunga' while we're doing this. Ever."

I thought he looked hurt, but he merely gave me a nod and said, "_As long as you never call me sensei._"

I swallowed hard. "I...suppose I can live with that."

I relaxed and let my body do what it wanted, as much as it wanted. I heard pattering wings, saw birds perching on the belfry fixtures to watch, but I'd stopped caring. I was feeling too good.

As our movements quickened, and I felt a climax approaching, I got a little too carried away and found myself blurting, _"Oh sensei!"_

I covered my mouth, but it was too late.

Splinter let out a mischievous chuckle, making me blush all over my body.

"_Oh no,_" I muttered, but we were already there.

I rode his thrust once more, and then I felt a geyser of tingling warmth erupting into me.

"Cowabunga!" the rat shouted as pleasure exploded through my body.

_Oh God, seriously?_ I thought, but only moaning came out of my mouth as the sensation rushed through my body.

I was glowing, the brightness radiating outward from my crotch to the ends of my fingers, toes and tail.

I collapsed, sated, into his arms.

I was still glowing as the throbs of pleasure subsided.

"I am happy to have you as my empress," Splinter said as he smoothed the fur on my buttocks.

"Ditto," I moaned.

That's when Nurse Cupcake fluttered down from the belfry, perching on the side of our literal love nest.

She opened her briefcase, giving me a pen and clipboard with a stack of paper on it.

"What's this?" I groaned.

"This is a birthing and reproduction renewal form," she said. "This re-enrolls you into NBF, _if you so choose._"

Swallowing hard, I took the pen and clipboard into my trembling hands.


End file.
